Tropical Glass Company (formerly Aboso Glass Co.)
Mr. Charles Quist
PO Box CNT205
Accra
Family-run business, now. He bought it from the Government in 1993, during the state-owned enterprise divestiture. They plan to go public in the future. 350 employees. But at the present time, their employees were laid-off and the company hasn’t been operating for a year. This is due to the fact that there was a 300% increase in electricity, so they had to shut down. We’ve gotten a loan to redo our furnaces, to use oil and gas and plan to open in August of this year. The new furnace will be gas and oil and will only use 60% of the previous electricity. The gas comes from the Western region of Ghana. Eventually, they will probably get their gas from the Nigeria Pipeline, now under construction (in about 2-3 years).
This is a major formal-sector business. They do bottling for the breweries, Coca Cola (Coca Cola has expanded its operations considerably in Ghana). We’re hoping to go into sheet glass (i.e., window pane) production at some point in the future, but sheet glass is expensive to start up. Demand in Ghana is not great, we’d have to go regional.
There are only two glass factories left in West Africa, one in Nigeria and one in Ghana. There’s another one in Cape Verde.
WAEN: He was invited to join by Ken Ofori-Atta. He was among the second group of members. They’ve been trying to remove the cross-border trading barriers and the Francophone/Anglophone blocks. The Francophone countries are still biased towards France and the former colonies. France still wants an influence in its former colonies. France mettled in and controls politics and their economies. For example, the CFA is still supported by the French franc. Whereas Ghana detached itself from the UK pound at independence. He thinks it’s important to have more regional cooperation. For example, he’s seen positive support develop between Nigeria and Ghana in inter-regional cooperation, at the highest levels of government, and including the private sector.
While the company is down right now, the furnace is being constructed—he is involved in a new computer internet company called Africast. His cousin, a managing director of Tropical Glass, got him involved in this computer company through a Ghanaian living in the US (Joe Sarpong, CEO of Africast). (In his office, there were about 10 computers and students learning computer skills. He had some brochures on Africast. May be an internet-service provider—see brochure—“consumer and business advertising, e-commerce and marketing in a single broadband experience. A fast growing market in Africa. Headquarters are in Westport, CT, USA).