GHANA HEAVY EQUIPMENT LIMITED

After over fifteen years of a far-reaching exercise involving the divestiture of most of the state-owned enterprises, which exercise is still on-going, only a handful of commercial enterprises remain as partly or wholly Government-owned ventures. One of the handful of commercial ventures that are currently wholly owned by the Government of Ghana is the Ghana Heavy Equipment Limited.
The Ghana Heavy Equipment Limited was established as the Heavy Equipment Division of the erstwhile Ghana National Trading Corporation (GNTC). The company was carved out and established as a wholly Government-owned commercial enterprise in 1995 when the mother-company, GNTC, was put on divestiture.

The company is engaged in the sale and servicing of earth moving equipment and tractors. For the earth moving equipment, the company is the sole distributor of Komatsu Earth Moving Equipment manufactured by the Komatsu company of Japan. The tractors - Zetor - for which the company again has sole distributorship are manufactured in the Czech Republic.

Ghana Heavy Equipment Limited deals mainly with companies in the mining, timber, agricultural, building and road construction sectors. The list of equipment the company provides to the mining sector includes bulldozers, wheel loaders, hydraulic excavators and motor graders. Some of the equipment are also used by companies in the timber, building and road construction industries. Several large and medium agricultural companies extensively use Komatsu machines and Zetor tractors in their operations. In the energy sector, Komatsu Generating sets are used nation-wide to provide the power requirements of many formal and informal sector organisations anytime shortfalls in power production and distribution make the acquisition of generators imperative.

The company controls about 30 per cent of the national market for heavy equipment, and is banking on its track record in both delivery and after-sale servicing to double its share of the domestic market within the next five years. It is also considering entering the sub-regional market.

Ghana Heavy Equipment Limited has its headquarters in Accra. However, given the location of most of its clients in the mining, timber and agricultural sectors, it has strategically established branches in Tarkwa, Obuasi, Kumasi and Tamale.

Its local client list includes mining giants AngloGold Ashanti and Ghana Manganese Company Ltd. Others are Ejura Farms, COCOBOD and the Produce Buying Company.