PRODUCTION AT VOLTA STAR TEXTILE SLUMPS (BACK PAGE)

PRODUCTION at the Volta Star Textile (VST) Company, formerly Juapong Textiles Limited (JTL), has slumped to 7,000 metres, far below its target of 65,000 metres of cloth per annum.
Saddled with inadequate capital, chemicals and spare parts, the company is on the verge of closure, the acting Technical Director of the company, Mr Evans Agyagbo, disclosed when he took the Volta Regional Minister, Mr Joseph Amenewode, on a tour of the various units of the factory yesterday.
Mr Agyagbo said GH¢3 million was granted the factory under the Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) but only part of that amount had been ceded to the factory as working capital, making 300 machines operational while 600 others lay idle.
He said initially the factory produced 5,000 metres a day but with a modest expansion from 192 looms to 300, production had increased to 7,000 metres a day, adding that it was operating eight hours a day, instead of 24 hours.
Mr Agyagbo said market for its international standard product was readily available in the country and elsewhere and that the Ghana Textile Printing (GTP) Company and the Akosombo Textile Limited (ATL) were its immediate clients.
He said under the EDIF grant, large quantities of cotton had been procured but the company was saddled with capital for chemicals and engineering spare parts.
The acting Technical Director, a textile engineer from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), said the status of the company was known to the Ministry of Trade and impressed on the regional minister that the factory was a viable entity that had to be revamped.
For his part, Mr Amenewode requested the management of the company to submit an updated proposal of operational needs for consideration.
He said the factory had the potential of becoming an industrial giant in the Volta Region and said the Volta Regional Co-ordinating Council would support any move to make it to operate to at least 80 per cent level.
The minister was accompanied on the tour by the Volta Regional Deputy Minister, Colonel Cyril Necku (retd), the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Mr Charles Hodogbey, and the North Tongu District Chief Executive, Alhaji Bubey Dzinadu.