The scent of the smoke from firewood is one of Benedictus Atsu Agbontor’s terrible memories growing up in the village. It is not a nostalgic scent, but one of necessity and labour.
Growing up in a household that is never fewer than ten people at any given time, the search for firewood was a herculean chore.
Young Benedictus would return from the farm, arms laden with wood enough to fuel his family’s kitchen for the coming week. Little did he know that this every Saturday search for firewood would influence him to charter a path to sustainability.
Mr. Agbontor produces charcoal briquettes from carbonising palm kernel shell. He has also experimented with rice husk and revealed plans to use cashew shells, too, for the charcoal production.
Speaking to the Business and Financial Times (B&FT), he emphasised that he is trying to use every agricultural residue as a means to saving a tree, revealing that he also uses charcoal dust to produce his briquettes.
Background
Mr. Agbontor was born in New Baika in Jasikan District of the Oti Region. He did his secondary education at the Tema Technical Institute and later proceeded to the Accra Technical University, where he studied Building Technology. Now he juggles between a full-time job and pursuing his passion. He works at the at Kotoka International Airport.
Motivation
As a day student at the institute, Mr. Agbontor had to commute daily to school through Ashaiman. He recalled one of such trips that afforded him a glance of thousands of tonnes of charcoal heaped along the road. He noted: “All these come from felling trees.”
The sight “scared him.” He was astounded by the havoc wreaked on the lifeblood of the nation, the tree cover. These bags are the bane of climate efforts, as trees are continually being fell for charcoal production and firewood. Charcoal is made predominantly in the northern part of Ghana and transported down south.
“I began to think about it,” he said, with his voice still carrying the weight of that experience. “What else can be done?” he quizzed himself.
In an effort to find answers to this question, Mr. Agbontor started exploring sustainable ways to make charcoal without necessarily having to fell trees.
His marriage to a woman from the north, whose family home is situated in the middle of a charcoal market further sharpened his vision.
He revealed that after spending some time pondering the problem, the vision became clearer but the solution remained elusive. Then, came what he calls a divine nudge.
He recounted one day when he was driving his regular route through Adenta and saw a mountain of discarded coconut shells rotting by the roadside. It was trash; an environmental nuisance. But upon approaching, he revealed: “God just spoke to me that this is money.”
Hurdles
With a practical mindset and no formal background in chemistry or manufacturing, he began to experiment in his backyard. He managed to carbonise the coconut shells using a local method, but the process wasn’t efficient nor sustainable. It produced a lot of smoke, putting him back in a pensive mode trying to figure out a solution. With the help of a local fabricator, he engineered a confined furnace to control the smoke.
The first successful briquette was a eureka moment. However, the actual business case became solidified when his mother, who suffered from childhood asthma, used his smokeless charcoal and found relief from the choking smoke of the normal charcoal she had been battling with.
At that moment, he realised it was no longer an experiment, but the birth of a sustainable company. He named his company Livingfire Limited. However, he revealed that the path from a passion to a viable business was a test of his resolve.
He established his first factory on a patch of land given to him by his landlord. Deserted with overgrown shrubs and grass, Mr. Agbontor single-handedly cleared the land and readied for work to kick off.
Having invested all his savings into some rudimentary equipment he made with a local fabricator, believing he had secured a space for his venture, his landlord changed his mind at the last minute. Without any warning, he asked him to stop whatever he was doing on the land immediately. The landlord later revealed that Mr. Agbontor did not ask for permission before bringing the equipment; hence, the seizure.
This forced Mr. Agbontor to recalibrate and decide his future. “I was actually building a house to live in and host my family before I got married. When it happened, I had no choice than to abandon the building to complete and start the factory there,” he revealed, with a hint of old pain in his smile.
However, he successfully transferred his entire operation to a half-built family home in Ayikuma in Accra, just to keep his dream alive.
The moment the space was secured, the challenges mutated. Local fabricators failed to build the machinery to the precision he needed. So, he again expended all his savings to import a proper extruder from China, only to discover his new site lacked the three-phase electricity required to power it.
He thought buying a generator will solve his problems and at least save him from unpredictable power supply. So, he bought a 20kVA generator, but the moment he put the machine under load, the generator would scream and shut down.
“The journey of an entrepreneur is a calling. Otherwise, mental stress alone can kill you. I feel like crying for you. I’m telling you, mental stress alone can kill you,” he noted.
Divine providence
According to him, this was a crisis that demanded a miracle, and with what he believes was divine intervention, he chanced on a new landlord who speaks his ‘language,’ an engineer. “He didn’t just offer a space; he understood the problem. He offered a permanent home for Livingfire,” he stated.
A breakthrough arrived when the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre (GCIC) recognised and supported him with a grant to import an industrial oven dryer. This has reduced his reliance on the unpredictable sun-drying process he always relied on, allowing for consistent, quality-controlled production.
With the natural sunlight drying process, Livingfire produced averagely 4 tonnes a month and about 60 tonnes a year. However, with this much sophistication now, Mr. Agbontor has increased his company’s production capacity to about 4 tonnes per batch. A batch takes only 16 hours to be fully dried.
However, his briquettes, though long-lasting, healthier and nicely packed, are struggling to go up the shelves of supermarkets in Ghana. Many are sceptical, telling him: “Ghanaians don’t come to buy charcoal from their shops”.
His journey is a map of scars and triumphs: but his resolve made him persevere till the end. Perseverance is his greatest asset.
Ambition
Mr. Agbontor aims to put up a state-of-the-art production factory in the next five years, which can produce at least 500 tonnes a year from different plant residues.
Contact details
Livingfire Limited
Ashiyie, along Adentan-Dodowa Road
GM 151 3453
Phone: 054 486 0444 / 054 6140 484
Facebook: Livingfire Company Limited
Linkedin: LivingFire Limited Company
Website: www.livingfirecarbon.com
