The shell of cocoa beans, which the Cocoa Processing Company (CPC) discarded as a waste product in the past, has now got ready market in the united States and Japan, where it is used for mulching on farms.
Locally some women and four major organisations are also using the shells in the production of soap - "Alata samina".
Since the discovery of its potential the CPC had since 1995 been exporting it on a small scale to earn hard currency.
The CPC was disposing of the shells at a far away dumping site from where some enterprising women went to collect to produce "alata samina" to sell to supplement their domestic income.
Available statistics indicates that in 1999 both foreign and local turnover was 5.4 million cedis while that of 2000 amounted to 63.1 million cedis.
Mr James Ekow Rhule, Public Relations Manager of the CPC, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that though the turnover for 2001 was still being
compiled it was expected to be higher than the previous years.
The CPC exports the shell through "Mirana International" a local company based in Accra.
Shell Collectors Association (SCA), Vetri Company (VETRICO), Volta River Estates (VRE) and the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana make use of the shells at the local level.
Mr Rhule said the women in the shell business now buy it directly from the SCA, which buys the shells in larger quantities from the CPC, and retails to the women.
VETRICO uses the shells for the production of drugs for poultry while VRE uses it for fertiliser.
The CPC produces cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, cocoa cake/powder about 95 per cent of which is exported.
In the 1999 to 2000 fiscal year, Mr Rhule said 24,981 tonnes of cocoa beans was processed and exported to yielded 24 million dollars, while 23,083 tonnes of the processed beans in 2000-2001 raked in 24.4 million dollars.
The remaining five per cent of the company's products was sold to Nestle Ghana Limited, Cadbury Limited and other companies to be processed into confectionaries - cocoa powder, pebbles, instant drinking chocolate and chocolate and sold locally.
In the CPC, no by-product is wasted because the semi-finished products from the cocoa factory serve as raw materials for the production of the confectioneries.
The high quality of the company's products on the international market had since 1980 won it international awards of gold medals in countries like Belgium, Cuba, Bulgaria, Japan and the United States.
In this era of "Golden Age of Business", there is the need for the government to identify and mobilise the women in the cocoa beans shell business and extend the small/medium scale loan to them in order to promote and expand their businesses.
These women, when identified, must be taught the modern technique in the production of the soap, so that many more Ghanaians would patronise their products.
When deodorised, Alata samina could compete favourably with the numerous the toilet soaps, found on the Ghanaian market and could even be exported and keep many women in business.
