The President and Chairman of M&C Group Global, Michael Bartlett-Vanderpuye, last Monday, ushered journalists into the company’s ultra-modern office facility at East Legon in Accra. The company also unveiled its new cooperate wear for the staff.
Speaking to Journalist before unveiling, Michael Bartlett-Vanderpuye filled answers to the government’s ‘Gold for Oil’ policy, and said it sounds excellent, and that it would be attainable if Government owned a mining company.
According to him, the government of Ghana’s new policy being designed to use gold to make purchases of oil on the commodity market is a good move.
However, he stressed that Government needs enough gold in the right quantity to be able to sustain such a deal and because the country does not have a mining company to produce gold to feed the deal, it would be difficult.
Touching on his company’s vision and where they hope to reach in subsequent years, Mr. Michael Bartlett-Vanderpuye revealed that the most important of his company’s portfolios were: gold mining, trading and exporting, and then real estate. E”verybody knows that minerals are a safe haven for an investor. Minerals appreciate in value, so we are looking at developing our minerals trading platform. We are looking at end-to-end where we mine, refine and supply to our clients. Clients will have an option of getting refined gold, or maybe a minimum cut of about 22.5 where they can also get it refined to get whatever minerals are left. Enough for trading or jewellery or storing for banking purposes.”
He said the Central banks are trying to build gold reserves because it helps them against inflation and to boost their currency hence, M&C wants to come up with a one-stop shop where they mine and engage at a minus, produce and refine at their end and then export to any of their customers across the globe.
He said: “We want to be a household name in Africa because we have seen from experience everywhere you go to do trading; people get their fingers burnt. But it is interesting to note that most of these people do not like to do research before getting into an industry. People actually think that we have what we call an African prize when it comes to gold.”
On the food commodity business, he said “we talked about what everyone wants and decided to build our own food commodity brand. We applied for an international trademark and after two and half years, this year we got an approved name, Levan Foods. We are developing our own food commodity chain targeted to most African countries of course, and we will specialize in fast-moving commodities like rice, sugar, cooking oil, sardines, tinned tomatoes, toiletries, etc. Because it is our own brand, we are not only focusing on Ghana, but we are also focusing on other African countries and then based on standards set by Europe, we will go global. The advantage is to have our own brand that goes global, and we are hoping to launch that in December. We had a soft launch with Ghana rice, and we are also looking at doing packaging and how to make it look attractive. Of course, health-wise, everything has to be wholesome with the best standards accepted internationally.”
Mr. Bartlett-Vanderpuye, who has been in business for the past fifteen (15) years disclosed that his company has a total of 2000 workforce in three continental countries for where he is currently operating his businesses.
He stated that for the past five years, he has been operating a business in Dubai, adding that he also has offices in Hong Kong, China, South Africa, United States of America (USA), saying that there were plans under way to open an ultra-modern office in Switzerland.
Mr. Bartlett-Vanderpuye stated that it was important for people in this country to practise entrepreneurship which would help create new job opportunities for the teeming unemployed youth to accelerate economic growth and development.
The Group prides itself with a sizeable number of research and information professionals working to fulfil the Group’s business dreams in Energy, Properties, Logistics and Trading, Minerals (Purchasing, Assaying and Exporting of Gold, Diamond and other precious minerals), Management Consultancy and Finance.
