CPC announces 10-year strategic plan to ensure profitability

Management of Cocoa Processing Company (CPC) Limited has announced a 10-year strategic plan to reverse the company’s current poor operational performance to that of profit-making.

Mr. Jacob Arthur, Board Chairman of CPC who announced this in Accra at the company’s Annual General Meeting on Thursday, said the plan was to ensure a year-round availability of cocoa beans of a minimum volume of 3,500 metric tonnes per month.

The strategic plans include a well-managed unit cost of processing beans as well as attaining a continuous mark-up of between eight to ten per cent on the processing of beans.

Mr. Arthur said CPC would strive to lower the average cost of cocoa beans to the company’s operations and use alternative energy and water sources to improve margins on the sale of semi-finished products and boost the cash generating capacity of CPC.

He said the company had acquired a generator from Germany and by the end of 2012, CPC would have a dedicated power line to ensure continuous power supply.

In the short to long-term period, Mr. Arthur said the company would expand its confectionery operations through effective plant utilisation and introduction of new product lines.

He expressed optimism that the company would add 7.5 per cent value to their semi-finished products by the end of 2015/16 year.

Mr. Arthur said “our major constraint has been our inability to source adequate working capital to finance the purchase of more cocoa beans from other sources and to take advantage of emerging opportunities in the confectionery industry.”

He said as a result of the company’s heavy indebtedness to commercial banks in the country, access to funds had been difficult to come by.

In view of the operational losses the company suffered, Mr. Arthur announced that shareholders would receive no dividend for the year 2010/12 financial year.

CPC’s reported loss for 2011 was GH¢12.8 million as against GH¢12.5 million in 2010 and as of September 2011, the company’s total liabilities had exceeded total assets by GH¢1.2 million.**