Tacks Farms Limited

Tacks Farms Ltd (TFL) was established in 1984 and was primarily producing vegetables, mainly okra and chillies, for the local market.

In 1989, a group of four(4) vegetable growers were organised through the Ghana Export Promotion Council (GEPC) to export vegetables to Europe. Tacks Farms Ltd was one of the growers selected. After this initial trial, the company has never looked back. We initially started with the export of asian vegetables, including tinda, turia, guar, tindhori, dudhi, ravaya, long beans, papri, chillies and okra among others.

Two years later, the plots were filled with exotic mangoes, florida varieties. Not too long after 125 hectares of mango were planted. After a period, pineapples were planted.

In 1995, a contact was made with a Swiss organic herbs producer who wanted to source from Ghana. This led to the company to start organic production with the support of FIBL(Swiss Organic Research Institute). The company was finally certified by BioInspecta, a swiss certifying body. It is worth noting that the company was the first company to be certified by BioInspecta outside Switzerland.

In 1996 the company embarked on a major value chain development and the project was written by APdf and financed by IFC, Proparco, ADB and Prudential with a value of about US$ 1.2 million. This included the setup of a state of the art product handling facility, including 2 precoolers, 2 holding rooms and a cold packing area; Improvement of irrigation system with installation of advanced drip irrigation technology; The improvement of communication means; Upscaling transportation; And training in pre,post produce handling practices. This enabled TFL to produce mangos, papayas, pineapple, assorted packed herbs, babycorn, aubergines, okra, assorted peppers, beans and others for the packers of the supermarkets in Europe. This was a major shift from supplying to wholesale markets to the supermarkets.

In 1995, Tacks Farms management decided to convert the farms to organic farm status, under the supervision of Bio Inspecta of Switzerland. Four years later it reached the first year of conversion under conventional labeling (produced under Swiss Organic Farming). In the year 2000 it attained the title "Second year of conversion to organic farming". In 2001 it reached the title "Certified as fully organic farm".

This has all been engineered by S. N. Tackie supported by his wife Gloria who have been promoters of this project. These days the company is managed by their children; Nii Nookwei (formerly consulting in the US), Nii Djan (IT and Communications) , Nii Aboni (Marketing), Naa Aku (Procurement and Logistics).