Accra, Sept. 25, GNA - A four-day training course on plastic packaging for export opened in Accra on Tuesday with a call on Ghanaian exporters to strive to enhance packaging their products in order to compete on the global market.

Mr Edward Collins Boateng, Chief Executive Officer, Ghana Export Promotion Council (GEPC), observed that on the global marketplace competitors had equally good products on offer and what distinguished a product from the other was packaging. "We are constantly being reminded that it is no longer sufficient to have a good quality product to convince consumers to patronise your products. What distinguishes a product from the other is the packaging," he said.

The training course organised by GEPC in collaboration with Institute of Packaging, Ghana, and funded by Trade Facilitation Office, Canada, attracted Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Accra and Tema. Participants are expected to discuss issues on international and national packaging laws, regulations, standards and importing guidelines. They will also review environmental and waste issues as well as product and package quality, specifications and acceptance criteria. Mr Boateng noted that the attractiveness of the product alone sold some products on the market.

He said packaging of agricultural produce was very crucial noting that yam from Brazil was patronised better than that from Ghana. This, he pointed out, was because of the way some Ghanaian yams were packaged.

Mr Boateng said GEPC attached great importance to issues of packaging of non-traditional products for the export market, adding that their keen interest stemmed from the growing importance of packaging in international trade.

He said the Council was therefore implementing training programmes in order to enhance market access and competitiveness of Ghanaian products on the global market.

"The Council hopes to hit half-a-billion dollar revenue on its non-traditional exports for this year," he said.

He announced that the Council would on October 12, honour exporters who excelled in export activities last year and challenged the participants to strive to receive awards in future. Mr Neil Cormack Robson, a member of International Packaging Consultants, recounted the increasing competition of products on the global market and urged exporters to add value to their products. Mr Robson said plastics packages could be recycled, noting that in India, most plastic products were recycled with plastics now being used in producing other new products.

He cited plastic water containers that had been recycled and were being used in producing other containers saying that could be replicated in Ghana.

Mr Robson therefore, appealed to city authorities and plastic manufacturing companies to put up bins and specify the kinds of containers to be put in them to be collected for recycling.