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The rubber plantation
The rubber plantation

Adding value to Ghana’s rubber: The plight of Bonsa Tyre Company Limited

The Bonsa Tyre Company Limited (BTCL) looks as forlorn as its redundant staff along the narrow, serpentine roads of Bonsaso in the Western Region. Cobwebs brushed against my face and dust covered my shoes as I was conducted round the ghost factory which has been closed down.

On both sides of the inner perimeter stood huge industrial machinery, crying for rehabilitation.

A former worker, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, expressed his misgivings about the devastation that the dilapidated company had brought to him.

Rubber trees with quaint little containers strapped to the trunks

"When I was working here, my family had a future; they had hope. I am a product of this factory, I got an education here, I got married here and my children are from here," he said.

According to him, the factory started producing tyres before Brazil and Korea, but the latter pair are now major producers and exporters of tyres while the former has become a white elephant.

The defunct factory, he said, was an epitome of how deep the once mighty tyre industry in Bonsaso had fallen.

Like the BTCL, many other factories such as the Daboase paper processing, jute, shoe, glass factories,  meat processing factory, canneries for fruits and tomatoes, and a radio assembly plant, all established in the 1960s, have suffered a similar fate.

The BTCL, until it was shut down, had the capacity to produce 1,230 tyres and 960 inner tubes a day, using raw materials from the local market.  It had also offered direct and indirect employment to thousands of Ghanaians.

Clumps of rubber ready to be processed

Availability of raw materials

Less than 45 minutes’ drive from the factory lies a huge rubber plantation that stretches across 86 communities in the Western Region.

Visible from the main Takoradi-Tarkwa road are canopies of rubber plantations with quaint little containers, strapped to the trunks of the trees to collect latex, the “white gold”.

According to statistics from the Ghana Rubber Estate Limited (GREL), 7,815 rubber out-growers had been assisted to plant 25,849 hectares of rubber, with GREL itself having a concession size of 20,310 hectares.

The company produces crumb rubber which is processed at its processed plant located at Apemenim for export. On the average, GREL exports 1,493.53 tonnes of processed rubber monthly to Europe and the United States (U.S.).

A rubber farmer depends on a thriving tyre production industry because it consumes about 60 per cent of the world’s natural rubber.  Footwear, belts, clothing and hoses are some of the key products that the industry provides.

Rubber being processed at the factory

Growing demand for tyres

The rising demand for tyres in the country has led to the influx of tyres from China and other parts of the world onto the local market, taking a greater share of the supply space.

Ghanaians are price-sensitive and prefer the use of low-priced Chinese tyres rather to the expensive European and American brands.  As a result, China has emerged a leading exporter of tyres to the country in recent times.

Currently, the varieties of tyres being imported into the country include Goodyear from Thailand, G.T radial from China, Dunlop from South Africa, Michelin made in France, Bridge Stone and Yokohama from Japan, among others.

Mr Samuel Asare, a tyre dealer at Abossey Okai, lamented that the Chinese importers had taken over the retail market reserved for the local dealers, forcing many of them out of business.

Some of the tyres imported from China

He said the import duty on tyres from abroad kept increasing due to the depreciation of the local currency against the dollar, adding that  import duty on a 40-footer container of tyres from Europe went for GH¢90,000.

The way forward, in his view, is for the government to revive the BTCL and ensure that the quality matches with others from Europe and the US.  That, he said, would be of great relief to most of the tyre dealers in the country and also protect the local industry.

An out-grower rubber farmer weighing the latex

Things need to change

Ghana, faced with high unemployment and a sinking cocoa and gold sectors, wants to revive its manufacturing base in an effort to diversify the economy.

The country’s economic growth has been largely dependent on the export of primary commodities such as gold, cocoa, timber, diamond and rubber.

The inner perimeter of the Bonsa Tyres Factory with abandoned structures

However, the inability to add value to the country’s primary products has resulted in  a decline in foreign exchange reserves, inflation, depreciation of the currency and inability to service debts.  This means that an alternative growth model must be found without delay.

The government is in the process of implementing the “One district one factory” initiative to curb the high rate of unemployment in the country.   One of the companies that ought to be looked at is the defunct BTCL.

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