The European Union (EU) has supported Tahir Fields Recycling, located in Sekyere Nkwanta in the Ashanti Region, to recycle and refine waste or used engine oil into fresh engine oil for the automotive industry.
The founder of the facility, Tahir Tajudeen Umar, received a matching grant of GH₵140,000 during the maiden GrEEn Innovation Challenge in 2021 by the EU and Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands funded ‘Boosting Green Employment and Enterprise Opportunities in Ghana (GrEEn) Project’ to expand his work.
The GrEEn Project is aimed at providing financial support for innovative and sustainable green businesses to upscale and create jobs in their communities.
Prior to receiving the grant, production at Tahir Fields Recycling stood at 12 litres of refined diesel engine oil per day. Currently, production has gone up to 940 litres of refined diesel engine oil each day due to the matching grant from the EU.
With the EU grant Tahir has secured a dedicated site for his recycling operations. The site is equipped with essential infrastructure, including a pre-treatment tank, filtration system, reactor, heating system, condensers, post-treatment tank, and a motor king for efficient transportation.
This innovation, according to Tahir Tajudeen Umar, was inspired after he engaged in research for his undergraduate project work.
Speaking at a ceremony to launch the ‘Tahir Field Recycling’, Tahir Tajudeen Umar touted the benefits he has received from the EU and SNV Ghana – implementers of the GrEEn project.
“Before SNV gave me the matching grant, they took me through six months of business advisory training which was done by their business hub partner, Recycle Up Ghana. Through the incubation programme, I learnt sustainable business management, bookkeeping, opportunities in the circular economy and creating a successful business,” he stated.
Furthermore, Tahir Tajudeen indicated that he aspires to continue training and employing more youth – even though he has trained six people already- providing valuable opportunities for personal growth and economic development within the community.
Business Development and Market Linkages Advisor on the GrEEn Project at SNV Ghana, Frederick Acquah, encouraged the public to support and get involved in helping to sustain the environment.
“We can no longer ignore the effect of waste disposal on our health and the environment and the need to transition into a circular economy is increasingly becoming urgent by the day. By supporting green entrepreneurs with training and funds, SNV, the Netherlands Embassy and European Union as well as our partners within the local and private sector are helping to build a country that is resilient to climate change,” Mr. Acquah said.
At the commissioning of Tahir Fields Recycling, the Chief of Sekyere, Nana Amakye, beseeched Tahir to gainfully employ the teeming youth of the community to reduce the rate of youth unemployment in the Community.
Looking towards the future, Tahir envisions expanding his operations and increasing production further. Additionally, he plans to venture into recycling lithium batteries, anticipating the rise of electric cars as the new technology in the coming years.
Our target group is SME within the cocoa value chain including the cocoa coperatives, cocoa processing companies, cocoa farmers, food processors and cocoa artisans. We have three clusters within the project, to strengthen the energy service centre of the AGI. Within AGI, we have a department called the energy service centre, we want to strenghten that sector in selected core areas. They focused on the food processing sector. The project will assist PS, the AGI energy service centre to the best services for small and medium sized food processing companies in the cocoa sector.
The second one is to support farmers through multipliers in the sustainable use of the solar energy. The project will assist, train and educate cocoa farmers, food processors on the use of solar energy technologies and how they can be
The third cluster is to establish AGI working group of solar companies to promote the use solar technologies within the agriculture and food processing space in Ghana.
Since the 1990s, climate change has been a major issue of concern for global leaders making governments across the world do their best to find solutions to mitigate the negative effect of climate change.
