COCOBOD woos investors into secondary processing
The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) is bidding prospective companies desirous of processing cocoa beans to do so up to the tertiary level.
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This is the point where the final products are made, rather than producing intermediary products such as cocoa liquors and cocoa butter for further processing in developed economies.
“This time, our focus is to see investments in the processing area that process cocoa up to the tertiary level. Therefore, we want to see chocolate and other cocoa products being made. That is where the money is and that is where the country can benefit,” the Public Affairs Manager of the Board, Mr Noah Amenyah, told the Daily Graphic in Accra.
He spoke to the news paper on the sidelines of a public investment forum to interact with a French investment delegation, significantly made up of the private sector from Bordeaux.
French delegation
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) is hosting the delegation, which is visiting the country to explore opportunities and partnerships in power and renewable energy, education, information and communications technology, transportation, tourism and hospitality, agribusiness and health care.
Other areas are packaging for export, pharmaceuticals, energy, waste management and infrastructure.
GIPC has assembled various local companies and institutions capable of partnering with the French investors who are in the country barely five months after the President, John Dramani Mahama, visited France with a delegation from Ghana.
One of the institutions that will have a close interaction with the delegation is COCOBOD. Besides Ghana, the world’s second largest producer of cocoa, it also produces the best quality beans which could be an opportunity for Bordeaux, and hence France, which produces and consumes a lot of cocoa products and confectionery.
The City of Bordeaux is well known for its agro-tourism – living on a farmhouse and having a first-hand interaction with the ecosystem and the cocoa sector affords business people from that city the golden opportunity to invest in similar ventures in Ghana.
Cocoa processing opportunities
Mr Amenyah said COCOBOD would take the French delegation on a visit to the Jubilee Cocoa Farm at Manpong, as well as the Tetteh Quarshie Farm at the same place.
The board will also apprise the delegation of the investment opportunities in the cocoa value chain, which include commercial establishment of cocoa farms, supply of fertilisers and farm inputs and processing, especially to the tertiary level, instead of doing part processing of liquors and butters.
He said the Cocoa Research Institute, the research arm of COCOBOD, had a number of cocoa bi-products on its shelves and it is the hope of COCOBOD to introduce them to the Bordeaux French investors for possible partnerships.
The CRI bi-products are geared towards maximising the values derived from the chain so that the farmer could get more income.
“These things that the framer would hitherto throw away can now be turned into other products and this is also an opportunity for investors,” the public affairs manager said.
Challenges to secondary processing
It has remained largely a management decision for investors to do partial processing and feed larger factories in developed economies.
But COCOBOD believes that with Ghana rising to the challenge of resolving its power deficit and with some encouragement, existing companies and new investors would be interested in playing at the tertiary level.
Should COCOBOD be successful in its bid to attract more secondary processors, then Ghanaians should be prepared to embrace the consumption of cocoa products as a way of life; at least to provide the investors with the captive market on which they could ride into other neighbouring and overseas markets.