Discovery Industries, an auto mechanic and metal fabrication industry in Tamale that would produce mechanical equipment for local use and for export, has started production.

The company will fabricate oil and gas tanks and pipes, hospital beds and furniture, metal gates, chairs and tables for offices and schools, motorbikes, tricycles and car body parts.

Others are fabrication and casting of aluminium products, non-fabricated products, re-boring and lining of engines, fabrication of shafts, cylinder heads, vehicle bolts and nuts.

Speaking to the GNA at the production site, Mr Philip Assibit Akpeena, the Chief Executive Officer, said investing in the north was not just to make profit but also to help create jobs and eliminate poverty in the area.

He said the north was now a safe haven for investment and added that it was for the indigenes of the area to show the way so that other investors would follow suit to ensure that the north reaped what it deserved.

He said the people of the north would no longer spend a lot of time and energy to travel to the south to buy simple basic items like nails and roofing sheets.

Mr Akpeena listed other items that the company produced as wheelbarrows and head pans, concrete mixers, shovels and spades, trailers of all kinds, re-working on cylinder heads, donkey carts, and metal water tanks, wheel and wheel bolts as well as various domestic utensils and cast jewelleries of various designs.

Others are bullock ploughs, seed planters, tractor ploughs and harrows, corn shellers, shea butter processing equipment, shafts for all types of vehicles, honey pressers, seed planters, nim seeds processors to oil, groundnut crackers and tomato grinders.

He said bowls, sauce pans, buckets and cutlery were all produced in the factory to ensure that such things could be sold in quantities in the north, adding that Togo, Burkina-Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger and Mali could also buy from the company.

He said 250 persons had been employed for the initial production and that by the end of 2013, some 2,000 youth were expected to be employed and stressed the need for government to pay more attention to investment in the north.