McDan Group through its subsidiary, Electrochem Ghana has begun search for partners to establish West Africa’s biggest industrial salt hub in Ada, a suburb of the Greater Accra Region in Ghana.

The move is to ensure that some value is added to the country’s raw salt before being exported to other parts of the world.

According to the Group Chief Executive for Mcdan, Kwaku Ampromfi, this is part of a long-term plan to produce about 5 million tonnes of salt from the Ada Songor salt field.

Kwaku Ampromfi made the disclosure in an engagement with one of its shareholders, the Minerals Income and Investment Fund (MIIF).

“Beyond just the refinery which will basically produce refined salt, what we really want to do as Electrochem here is to make a name because we don’t want to just play in the salt space, but we want to be in the chemical space”.

“Salt is a major ingredient used in making most chemicals, so our goal is to move from salt to refine salt then chemical production which we need to build a caustic soda plant with few other plants we seek to build. Putting all together, we have about close to $85 million to do that and the kind of volume we will do here is also about minimum three to five million tons annually”, he disclosed.

Electrochem Ghana Limited is an indigenous Ghanaian company operating at the Ada Songhor Salt works which spreads across 41,000 acres of land, making it the largest salt field in the sub region.

The company has initiated a phased approach to reach full production capacity, starting with an initial target of 1.2 million metric tons per annum by 2026.

The Group CEO also told the team that Electrochem has commenced the process to raise additional equity capital of $30 million through an Initial Public Offer on the Ghana Stock Exchange to scale up production to two million metric tons per annum.