Camelot Ghana: Security Printing, Business Forms Manufacturing and Design Facility

Interview with John Colin Villars, Managing Director of Camelot Ghana Limited

What is your assessment of the sector in Ghana and the subregion? Is the market competitive? Are there many new entrants?

It is quite a dynamic sector and it is growing very organically and very quickly in that it is multi-faceted. There are different challenges in the area of new documents or new solutions that users require across government, private and tertiary sectors. There is also the challenge of digitalization. Things are digital now. People are either deciding to continue with paper and documents versus electronic copies of items and documents. We have all heard the phrase “paperless office” but we do not know how real that will ever be. There will definitely be a paper element in everything that we do. Camelot is positioned to take advantage of the evolution of document solutions across various sectors and markets, especially Ghana where we are located, as well as across the subregion, including countries we have worked in before as well as countries that we hope to work in, especially the francophone areas.

Can you describe your competitive advantages? Where do you stand out?

Cheques and certificates are two core areas where we have the strongest advantage. We have an advantage in our design originations and a large variety of security features that we can adopt to suit any peculiar challenge or threat that the users of the documents have.

We have been doing this for close to 40 years, evolving from a business forms manufacturer into security documents. We have pioneered in terms of creating documents and assessing the needs of various tiers of government and society for specific document solutions. That leadership role has always been there in that we try to stay ahead of the pack by using the global best practice. We attend all the best exhibitions and fairs in North America and Europe so we are in touch with changing dimensions in our space. That and our corporate governance attitude have given us an edge. For example, we are the only ISO certified company in our space. We stay ahead with the latest technology regarding paper fibers, inks, holograms and all the technology we require in our space. We tend to also have very good relations with the best players globally in this area. For example, we have talked about the possibility of rolling out an ePassport solution. This is something that is missing in the subregion. To be able to do that, we have brought on players in a large consortium, big names like KBA. KBA-NotaSys in Switzerland is the largest company in the world involved in bank notes in that 90% of bank notes printed globally are printed on KBA machines. If you are attached to such a globally profound partner, that tells you the sort of affiliations that you want to make to have an impact in this part of the continent. So, in that regard, we try to stay abreast with the latest technologies and see how best we can adopt them here if they are required or relevant.

You have developed a lab for this, correct? What R&D research department are you utilizing?

We are a small to medium company, but we have a culture of product development, which means as our sales and marketing team tries to do business development and as we travel around the world to see new technologies, we pay close attention to how to adapt them to suit or improve systems here. For example, 18 months ago, we rolled out a solution called CanVerify and this is simply a QR code based anti-counterfeiting solution for documents. In Ghana today, all the cheques that Camelot prints and personalizes feature a QR code. That code allows us on the back of our proprietary software we have created to determine the full trail of a single cheque leaf. That means you cannot go to a bank and present a fake cheque leaf or an altered or counterfeited cheque leaf and still get value for it. It is a novel solution the banks are very excited about and are queueing up to take advantage of. We hope to adopt the same solution across other document solutions.

Do you have to work in partnership with the rest of the banking system?

Not exactly. The Central Bank of Ghana in Ghana and of course the Central Bank of Nigeria in Nigeria are regulators of cheque printers in both countries. They have offered us the basic or primary mandatory security features that cheques must have. So, there are standards. On top of those, we add a few more layers of more secure features, which the banks are allowed to sign on to. But under regulation, you must disclose this to the Central Bank for approval before you keep adding to it. That is how we are regulated.

Are you interested in attracting partnerships, investors or international help?

In terms of investors, we are looking at two core areas, proper cash and strategic market partners. We are aware of very interesting opportunities in the markets we operate in which will require some element of actual investment outlay in terms of acquisition of equipment, technology, etc. We have our own blueprints and a dashboard where we monitor the best or most attractive investments in our area. But apart from that, we need strategic business partners in the area of business development. In francophone West Africa, for example, there is still a lot of room to offer the products and services that we have, but for the lack of the financial wherewithal to go in there and develop it from scratch, we have not managed to do that successfully. So, we welcome that sort of partnership.

What are the products where you are the strongest?

Cheques and certificates are two core areas where we have the strongest advantage. We have an advantage in our design originations and a large variety of security features that we can adopt to suit any peculiar challenge or threat that the users of the documents have. With cheques, those are regulated, they have mandatory features that we add on to. We have a strong advantage there. In cheques in themselves, because of their nature, they need to be done and regulated carefully to avoid the threat of fraud and the risk of getting into the wrong hands and by our experience in ISO certification, we do things properly. You find in many francophone countries that they still import a lot of cheques from France. Togo is next door and they could take advantage of our presence here and order all of their cheques, perhaps a lot cheaper, in a more time efficient manner. These are some of the areas of our core strengths we would like to develop.

What is a success story where you have partnered with someone or provided a specific product or service?

We have quite a lot of partnership success stories. We have partnered with actual customers or consumers and that is really the story of our company. We go in there and from scratch develop something that does not exist. That is in fact the history of Camelot. Our founder happens to be Ghana’s first female computer programmer and that means going to the customer and designing the business from scratch, from nothing. So, with that culture, we continue to originate new products. Cheques are regulated. There are standards, but so many other things are not, like CanVerify, the solution we have created. For DVLA in Ghana, for example, we have over the years continued to evolve different solutions. They might come to us and say their documents are being counterfeited, how best can we advise? We would then offer to use a combination of paper and design, a hologram, some unique numbering. In Nigeria for example, we have partnered with insurance companies who have the mandate to print travel insurance for EU countries, all the Schengen countries. We originated from scratch what the travel certificates had to look like because they were being counterfeited. We had to use a combination of design, paper and ink that allowed specific verification. That was used for well over 12 years until it became more digitized. In Ghana, in sporting for example, we have originated sporting, gaming and event tickets for stadiums from scratch as well. There is quite a variety of areas where we have succeeded.

Project yourself into the medium term, three years’ time. What is your vision for the company? What do you want to achieve?

Camelot remains a small sized company with so many years of experience and a big bastion of intelligence of how the market in this area works. We plan to leverage the good relationships that we have in the industry and the experience that we have to create new product solutions in the areas of smart solutions, verification, validation systems, and we want to migrate into flexo printing. While doing that, we want to see where our solution origination will take us regarding the cheque market. The cheque market obviously will not be there forever. But while it grows into more smart and mobile app type solutions, we want to work in that area as well to leverage on the relationships that we have with all the banks and institutions.

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