FACILITIES

Where the work happens

Buying points, storage and the road between them. Unglamorous, and the part that decides whether a crop arrives in good condition.

BASE: Techiman, Bono East
BUYING: Collection points across the savanna belt
EXPORT PORT: Tema, Ghana

Techiman and the buying points

Our base is Techiman, which sits on the market town route between the growing regions and the south. During the season our buyers work out from here to collection points across the savanna belt, agreeing prices, inspecting what has been gathered and paying on the spot.

The buying points themselves are simple: a place to weigh, a place to inspect, and somewhere shaded to sit while a price is agreed. What makes them work is that the same buyers return to the same groups year after year, so nobody is starting a negotiation from nothing.

Being close matters. A crop that comes off the road quickly is a crop that has not been rained on. How buying works.

Storage

Stock is held raised off the ground, ventilated, under roofs that are checked before the rains rather than during them. Damp is the single most common way value is lost between a farm and a ship, and it is almost always preventable.

Stock is stacked by lot rather than by crop, which looks inefficient and is not. It means a batch can be pulled, tested or traced without disturbing the rest, and it means a problem found in one lot does not put a question mark over everything stored beside it. How lots are recorded.

Holding stock also lets us supply a customer monthly rather than only when the harvest allows. What our storage does.

Getting to the port

Goods leave through Tema for overseas buyers. We arrange the inland haulage, the consolidation and the booking, and we track the container until it lands rather than waiting for a customer to ask where it is.

Timing is the part customers feel. A container that misses a sailing waits for the next one, and the crop sits somewhere in the meantime. We plan loading dates backwards from the vessel rather than forwards from the warehouse, which is a small discipline that saves a great deal of standing time.

How shipments are handled.

What we are still building

The facilities we have are adequate rather than impressive, and we would rather say so than photograph them flatteringly. More covered storage close to the growing areas is the first thing we need, because that is where losses happen and where a modest investment protects the most value.

Processing capacity is the second. Doing more of the cleaning, pressing and packing here rather than shipping raw material keeps value in Ghana and shortens the chain for buyers. What processing involves.