Officials at the event
TIAST GROUP, a company committed to increasing the value of agriculture through industrialisation, has held its seventh Agric Industry Conference in Accra to showcase profitable opportunities for cassava processors.
The conference exposed close to 200 industry players to opportunities the TIAST Group, in collaboration with Stanbic Bank, offer for starch processors.
Business Development Manager at TIAST Group, Augustine Esamoah, speaking with the media said the project forms part of the agriculture industrialisation agenda to help local entrepreneurs build cassava processing plants, which would produce starch for the Chinese market and subsequently the local market.
Mr Esamoah further noted that the group, in conjunction with Stanbic Bank, would provide about 80% financial investment for local businesses who want to go into starch production, with a condition that all products produced would be sold at the international price of $485 a ton.
He said TIAST Group will also serve as an off-taker of the starch for sale in China and some parts of the Asian market for its business partners.
He explained that TIAST would also provide technical training for staff of these companies that will be set up, as well as after-build servicing of machines, to ease the work of local companies who hitherto would have had to import parts and get technicians from the same China to service their machines in case of any breakdown.
“As part of this plan, TIAST will set up a spare parts manufacturing plant at Dawa, in Tema, to provide after-build services to their local partners. It will serve as a one-stop shop for all agricultural processing machine and spare parts and this gives us the capability to resolves any repair and part replacement in the shortest possible time,” he said.
Business Development Executive of TIAST Group, Irene Sackey, said Ghana has the raw material production advantage over China, and TIAST seeks to provide technology and technical support, as well as access to the Chinese market to the companies they will be partnering with.
Benedict Kwesi Obeng, Head of Business Development and Origination/Acting Head of Agri Business, Stanbic Bank, said the financial institution signed a MoU with TIAST Group to support the cassava production and processing value chain.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri