Ceylon cinnamon is native to one region of the world and is considered a priceless commodity in the spice world.

The cinnamon tree originally grew wild in the island of Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) and thereafter was known as Ceylon cinnamon by the British – considered “real” cinnamon.

Cinnamon is botanically identified as Cinnamomum verum and is known as a spice product that takes years to reproduce and hours of dedicated work to harvest. Growing Cinnamon trees is an investment for many farmers and takes them years to collect on.

The process of cinnamon harvesting starts with peelers doing the delicate and essential work of stripping the inner bark of each branch by hand. Considered the most labour-intensive part of the process – the production of the most valuable cinnamon – the bark – must be made extremely thin.

After the bark is removed, each piece is sun-dried – curling up within a few minutes. After drying, the small pieces are stuffed inside a straight piece of bark, forming one 42-inch quill.

By the end of a long day, workers will have only produced about 3 pounds of quills. Those then need to dry for 3 to 4 days before they’re packed into bales and sent off to a separate facility. That’s where they’ll be graded and officially priced based on their width.

One pound of cinnamon quills can cost around $27. The thinner the quills are, the more costly they will be.

It is then that Cinnamon is exported the world over for consumption, as a golden spice commodity.