Good news for our transport operators up north is that South African condition monitoring specialist, WearCheck, has expanded its African footprint into West Africa with the opening of a world-class oil analysis laboratory in Ghana.
Strategically situated in Tarkwa near the gold fields several hundred kilometres inland and west of the capital Accra, WearCheck Ghana is set to primarily service the burgeoning local mining industry. However, many other Ghanaian industries are set to benefit from using oil analysis as a key proactive maintenance tool, including trucking, construction, automotive, shipping, aviation, industrial, electrical and petrochemical.
Neil Robinson, managing director for WearCheck, views the expansion into West Africa as the next step in WearCheck’s ongoing strategic expansion.
“The stable Ghanaian economy and good governance were important factors in our decision to select Ghana as our starting point in West Africa. Another draw-card is the fact that several of our South African mining clients also run operations in Ghana and we wanted to support them by offering the same high quality condition monitoring services they already use in South Africa.’
The WearCheck network currently includes a presence in seven countries – South Africa, Zambia, India, Dubai, Zimbabwe, Namibia and now Ghana – and includes nine world-class laboratories, all located in areas best positioned to serve particular industries or industry clusters. Demand for WearCheck’s services has played an influential role in determining new locations for laboratories.
High quality, modern instrumentation service and a fast sample turnaround time are some of the draw-cards at WearCheck Ghana. The sample processing is overseen by Ghanaian nationals Samuel Yenyi, laboratory supervisor and Daniel Boakye, who have a wealth of knowledge and experience in oil analysis.
Robinson is confident that Ghanaian businesses will reduce operating costs by using oil analysis as a key proactive maintenance tool. “The ultimate goal of oil analysis is to reduce operating costs and to save customers money. By reducing unscheduled downtime, oil analysis increases the availability of machinery, improves productivity and boosts the bottom line,’ he says.
The opening of the first WearCheck laboratory nearly 40 years ago in South Africa was the start of an illustrious corporate journey in which international recognition and demand for world class services has led to steady organic growth into new locations and continuous expansion in the range of services as condition monitoring capabilities evolve to meet industry demands.
With endorsement from several international bodies, WearCheck maintains its status as the only laboratory on the African continent to have ISO 9001 quality certification, ISO 14001 environmental certification and ISO 17025 accreditation for their fuel and transformer laboratories.
