Interview with Fares Akl, Managing Director at Qualiplast Ghana

What is your assessment of the plastic products sector in Ghana and the subregion? What are the latest trends and where is the sector in 2018?

The plastic sector in general in West Africa needs to be worked on. There are a lot of innovations to be done and more development is needed. We are still lacking far behind and people are still producing the same products that they were in the 60s and the 70s. We can see the same packaging and the same consumer products being produced since the last 30 or 40 years.

Is this only in Africa or internationally as well? Why is it not evolving?

My experience is mainly here or in the African sub Saharan region where there has been no development. I personally have been a member of the Institute of Packaging, I am the Vice President now, and I was one of the founders of the Institute of Packaging in Ghana. There are a lot of developments still to be processed. For instance, we have a lot of natural resources, like cashew nuts, shea nuts, etc. These are products that need to be packed in better packaging and we are not able to pack it properly. People come from outside the capital and they put the product in bulk in bamboo baskets and just want to send it away. Tomatoes, for example, are being put in wooden boxes and being sent to the capital with about 35% post-harvest losses.

Why is this? It is because they are not aware or that it is too expensive? Is it because you are not present?

We export around 30% of our product today throughout the West African region, including household products and industrial products.

There are policies missing in the system. The government must put policies in place for farmers and traders. In the past, we transported beer, Pepsi, Coke, and soft drinks in wooden half crates. We cut down all our trees and destroyed our forests in the 60s and 70s. Then, there was a policy put into place to stop cutting down our forests and destroying our wood. You could only use the crate two or three times in the system and later ended up burning them. Once they put that policy into place to stop cutting the trees, everyone had to move to plastic full-depth crates. These rigid plastic crates today can be used over 25 years and later on you recycle the same crate and reuse it again. We are saving our nature and our environment. This comes back to the consumer. You can imagine how much we can save in the agriculture sector as well as our sector and our community if we start transporting our agri products in plastic rather than wooden crates.

What is your product range in West Africa?

We produce products for the industrial sector. We are into plastic packaging, injection molding, and blow molding. We do injection molding of products like caps, which is the smallest product such as toothpaste caps, to the largest at the waste garbage bins, as well as basins, buckets, and more. We can go even bigger to produce plastic pallets to replace the wooden pallets. Anything you can imagine in injection molding plastics, we can do. In blow molding, we produce our smallest bottle from ½ liter to jerry cans of 20 liters, 25 liters, up to 100 liters. These jerry cans we make for oil marketing companies like Total, Shell, etc. We also make ice chests for storing cold goods.

You sell to both the consumer and the industrialist, two sectors. Which do you promote the most? To consumers, you sell through supermarkets or outlets, but you also sell directly to the companies. How do you address these two different markets?

We have a marketing team, part of which sells directly to consumers. We have outlets in Ghana -Accra, Tema, Kumasi, Tamale, Takoradi- that deal directly with the markets. We have about seven of these and they are our own company outlets. There is another team that deals with the industrial sector. This team goes directly to the industrialists like Unilever, Nestle, the breweries, all the bottling companies, pharmaceuticals, all these sectors.

What is your competitive advantage? You are not the only plastic products producer. Are you one of the leading companies? Where are you better than the other companies and what do you bring that is different?

We are the only company that is ISO certified. We are 9001 2015 ISO certified and we have 40001 ISO certification. We also have OHSAS certification. We have certain procedures that take place on an hourly and daily basis, which is checked by each and every one of us inside the operation from operators to technicians to supervisors. We make sure that each product that comes out is checked against a checklist. That is an advantage to our clients, especially in the industrial sector. Another advantage is that we have a professional team that deals with every item and every product. Every product that is not produced or cannot be produced on the market, professionals have visited us here to look for special materials that have been produced in our company. It is a key factor for us. ABS is a special material that not every company can produce in Ghana. Polycarbonate is another product no one else is producing here. Those are special products, so-called technical materials. Any one of the 40 plastics manufacturers in Ghana can produce polyethylene and polypropylene, in the polyolefin family, but they cannot produce these technical materials.

What advantage does this ABS material give you?

If you want to go into car manufacturing today in Ghana, Qualiplast can start at any moment. Polyamide, which is a nylon material, we are ready to start producing in Ghana today. As Ghana is ready to receive investors to start producing or assembling cars and trucks, as our president announced recently during his visit to China and when Counselor Merkel visited Ghana, Qualiplast is ready for this task. Other companies cannot produce these technical products, but our machines are specialized to produce those technical plastics. You need not only the technology but also the expertise, which we have.

You also are active in exporting. How much do you export?

We export around 30% of our product today throughout the West African region, including household products and industrial products. We have a lot of industries in the West African region that rely on our product.

How do you achieve your exporting?

I used to go personally myself, but for the last ten years, we have had a team of marketing experts that travel around and follow up on our markets internationally.

What is your strategy to develop yourself?

Pushing for export in the West African region is very essential for us. We need foreign exchange, but we do not want to forget about the local market. We are focusing on giving priority to the technical products and the special products. The most important is to add value to our product and diversify. We are not going to continue for the same old product. There are over 40 manufacturers in Ghana keeping the same product going for the last 30 years. Ghana has been like that for several years. Somebody comes in as a trader selling baskets and then years later, he is still selling the same basket. The trader becomes an industrialist. Times have changed. Today, the day has come for a professional person to lead the industry knowing what he is doing and understanding the system.

Project yourself into the medium term, two to three years’ time. What will Qualiplast be if all your strategy and developing goes well?

We are looking at the stable economy ahead. We are definitely going to continue investing and diversifying. We want to increase our export and our capacity. This is very important for us. We will do this through investment, which we have never stopped. We will invest in new equipment and new designs for molds.

Will you still produce here in Ghana and export, or do you have plans to start producing somewhere else?

No, only in Ghana. Personally, I am leaving it up to my children, the second generation, to continue the business. They were here since childhood and they will continue being committed, as I was the last 40 years, to the business and to growing this business from what it is now. Innovation is the way and we are looking into expansion as well.

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