B.K. AMANDI

B.K. AMANDI

$400 Million

CEO, GHANA METAL FABRICATION & CONSTRUCTION LIMITED 

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Wealth: SELF MADE, ENGINEERING

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Known For: AEL ENGINEERING LIMITED

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OVERVIEW

Ghana Metal Fabrication & Construction Limited and its subsidiary, AEL Engineering Limited, are both owned by B. K. Amandi and are engaged in large-scale steel fabrications and in the processing and exporting of scrap aluminium, respectively.

Amandi is a Ghanaian of Nigerian descent who immigrated to Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana in his teens. There, he came into contact with some Hausa people who were gathering scrap aluminium in villages near his home and then melting and casting it into aluminum ingots that could be sold on the market. Amandi became involved in this activity, smelting the scrap on his landlord’s premises.

The Kaiser Aluminium company was disposing of waste (aluminium dust or ‘dross’) on their Accra site, and it was while scavenging on the site that Amandi was discovered by an American employee of Kaiser Aluminium who was curious to discover what he was doing with the waste material. The Kaiser employee came with five colleagues to inspect Amandi’s operations and advised him that it was inappropriate to operate under such conditions. The accumulation of dross on the Kaiser site was a problem for the company as it attracted scavengers, and the six Kaiser executives gave Amandi a letter of support that allowed him to purchase an industrial plot and to put his operation on a sounder footing. In 1978 Amandi transformed his operation (which he had run since 1973 under the name Amandi Scraps and Pots Manufacturing Enterprise) into a limited liability company called

Amandi Enterprises Limited, was renamed Aluminium Enterprises Limited in 1980. In this same year he spent some time in the UK, first in Birmingham learning about smelting processes, and subsequently in other parts of England, Scotland and Wales where he was able to observe best-practice smelting operations.

On his return to Ghana he raised his yield on dross input from its former level of 25% to between 40% and 50%. He benefitted from the advice and assistance of technicians in the Kaiser Company who helped him to improve his operations.

His output levels reached almost 500 mt per month, and he was selling to buyers from Mali, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast as well as to local makers of kitchen utensils. By 1980 he was employing 500 people and had an annual turnover of US$5–6 million. During this period he was buying 90 percent of all the scrap aluminium in Ghana and was the biggest smelter of scrap aluminium in West Africa.

By 1990 Amandi was regarded as one of Ghana’s leading businessmen and had several approaches from international financial institutions that wanted to invest in his Aluminum Enterprise Company. He eventually entered an arrangement with an European investment bank that involved a major investment to modernize his plant. The affair ended badly, however, and was followed by many years of litigation. He was deposed from his role in running the company and replaced by foreign consultants. He still retains his ownership of the business but it no longer smelts aluminium, rather it engages in the collection of scrap aluminium, which is compressed and exported.

In 1997 Amandi acquired an engineering operation, Ghana National Trading Corporation, which was being divested by the Government of Ghana. This became a subsidiary of his AEL Company and was named AEL Engineering Limited. In 2005 it was renamed Ghana Metal Fabrication & Construction Limited.

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NET WORTH SUMMARY

Ghana Metal Fabrications & Construction supplies a number of bluechip companies, mostly in the oil and gas sector. Its main clients are Shell Oil Ghana Limited, Mobil (now Total S.A), Ghana Oil Company, Engen, Havilla Oil Ghana Limited, Glory Oil Ghana Limited and Fraga Oil Ghana Limited. The company also supplies the Coca Cola Company, Accra Brewery Limited and Ghana Oil Development Company Limited with a wide range of metal fabrication products, such as overhead tanks, storage tanks, masts, billboards, and so on.

Amandi’s firm is also responsible for the construction of pipe laying for large-scale transport pipe projects and the establishment of connections to oil and gas facilities.

Ghana Metal Fabrications & Construction meets highly specialized technical specifications in oil rigging, manifolds and heated fuel oil circuits for the chemical, petrochemical and other sectors.

Ghana Metal Fabrications & Construction is the market leader in undertaking fabrications for the oil and gas sector.

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Visibility Ratings: B