Tropical Cable partners CTC Global to produce conductors
TROPICAL Cables and Conductor Limited has signed an agreement with global electric cable conductor firm, CTC Global, to manufacture the A-triple-C (ACCC) cable conductors for use in the power sector.
The ACCC conductor provides a technology that can eliminate grid congestion and safely carry twice the current of a conventional ACSR steel reinforced conductors that are in use in the electricity grid and distribution systems.
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The conductor type, officials also say has the ability to protect the grid from sag trip outages and reduce costly grid congestion.
The deal according to the management has seen the company investing about $5 million to enhance the capacity of its plants and equipment as well an investment in its quality control systems to ensure that all tests from the laboratory conform to quality and international standardisation tests.
At a brief ceremony at the factory in Tema to sign the deal which will see the company begin manufacturing of the cable conductors next year, the Managing Director of Tropical Cables, Martin Mensah, said that by the agreement, the deal makes the company the authorised manufactures of the ACCC conductors for the entire African region.
“A chunk of what we will manufacture will also go to serve CTC Global’s market in China, Europe, US and this takes us from being a local player to place us in a place where we can serve the world,” Mr Mensah said.
Global supply chain
Mr Mensah indicated that while Topical Cable’s operations had moved away from just the manufacture of household and commercial cables, the company felt the need to diversify into becoming a full spectrum enterprise that could help drive Ghana’s industrialisation agenda.
The company, he said thus finds it exciting that the partnership with CTC Global puts it in a better position within the global supply chain.
“Also reflecting on the timing, you will see that we have held on for a while, building a good business with the necessary buffers that has survived very tough times over the past 25 years,” Mr Mensah stated.
In scaling up the country’s industrialisation agenda, Mr Mensah said that the more companies in Ghana undertake similar strategic partnership with global entities successfully, the closer the country gets to building a resilient economy, “and these offsets the negative impacts on our overdependence on importation,” he said
CTC Global
The Vice President in charge of strategic projects at CTC Global, Carl Ulrich in his remarks said that while Africa continues to be a land of opportunity for conductors and infrastructure, it realised the need to undertake local manufacturing, having worked on the continent over the last decade.
CTC Global’s focus over that period he said, saw the company growing its market share in Nigeria, South Africa and Ethiopia.
“As we started to win projects across the continent, we realised the need for local manufacturing and we were lucky to have a great agent here in Ghana who got us to Tropical Cables whose standards passed our assessments and appraisal tests,” Mr Ulrich said.
Ghana, he added had the potential to help the CTC Global grow its markets not only in Ghana but across the West African sub–region.
