Chairman of McDan Group, Dr. Daniel McKorley has revealed that the idea to go into salt mining is to enable him realize his dream of building an international chemical production industry.
According to him, Electrochem Ghana’s activities at Ada Songor is to extract the raw material to shore up the establishment of the international chemical production; and from his research he discovered that Ghana is the best places to get best quality salt.
McDan as he is popularly called, was speaking in an interview with Wode Maya.
According to him, the extractive industry in Ghana has been dominated by foreigners propelled by colonialism where we have thrown it to the foreigners.
McDan said he has decided to take on such the tedious mantle of managing the largest salt mine in Africa as an individual because “we are living in a country where some of us have to be pacesetters and dare, we can do better and bigger thing than this.”
He said, “We can’t always leave all to foreigners believing that they can do it better than us. For you to do this and succeed, you need courage, you need unlimited courage.”
According to him, although he hasn’t faced any problems, financially, when he began his entrepreneurship journey, about 99% of the people will say he was wrong.
“You have to listen to them; it is either you are making a mistake or making history…For us, we have come far to be making mistakes,” he said, indicating strongly that the McDan Group is making history with the management of the Songor Lagoon.
Speaking briefly how the Electrochem Journey begun, McDan said it all begun with a journey through town and saw the opportunities that have been left to rot for over 55 years.
According to him, he decided to take advantage of the opportunities that Songor has, to start building a whole industry.
“We have gotten somewhere that we have to industrialize. We have to build this country to somewhere,” he added.
He also explained why Africans are not able to manage their affairs and resources better, saying that it takes the right positive attitude, right mentality, and the right leadership to bring change.
Daniel Mckorley said, these three-factor are making African’s inferior mentally, because Africa has so much yet, the people can’t do it.
He said he wanted to build a legacy, a dynasty to inspire the you that they can make it in Africa.
He said: “We have gone closer to the world because of internet. Artificial Intelligence has brought us very close to the world but we cannot lose our values. Most African millionaires are always ahead of their businesses, but you must always ensure that your business has to precede you, your business has to be ahead of you.”
As an individual managing and building a 41,000 acres of salt mine, being the largest salt mine in Africa Daniel Mckorley thinks he is a billionaire.
When asked if he is a billionaire, he answered by saying “I think So.”
Uniqueness of Electrochem
He pointed out that the size and quantity of salt being mined makes the place unique.
According to him, Electrochem is mining 60,0000 metric tons of salt, although mining a small portion of the 41,000 acre-land, the goal is to mine 1 million metric tons of salt.
McDan also took the opportunity to talk about his Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and maintained that billionaires must endeavor to touch lives and bring smiles on peoples’ faces.
According to him, “When you have money and you see smiles on peoples’ faces you are happy.”
He mentioned the McDan Entrepreneurship Challenge, construction of schools, construction of AstroTurfs, hospitals, support for women with interest free loans, scholarships to students as some of the many things the McDan Group is doing to touch lives.