Just a little background on Triton Logging, how they got started, where they started, and who provided their initial funding.
Wayne Dunn, owner and president of Triton Logging, who ran a consulting firm that specialized in socially responsible business, thought of Ghana as an excellent place to begin underwater logging. Dunn's wife, Gifty, was born and raised in Ghana before moving to Canada. Dunn met his wife in the mid-nineties when they both served on the board of Plenty Canada, an Ottawa-based group that helped African natives and Canadian aborigines build more sustainable communities through programs that provided such resources as instruction in better farming techniques and new water systems. Since their marriage, Dunn spent quite a bit of time in his wife’s native country as a consultant.
Dunn consulted his unofficial board of advisors starting with his father, John, once a logger. Then he turned to former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, whom Dunn had met not long before when Dunn was a guest speaker at a conference in Africa on corporate social responsibility that Clark also attended.
Dunn knew the former PM had a long-standing interest in Africa and was working at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., so he arranged a lunch meeting to discuss the Ghana idea. Next, he approached Steve Hicks, a former investment banker and close associate, and Michael Bush, a management consultant specializing in small business. In October 2005 Clark agreed to cofound Clark Sustainable Resource Developments (CSRD) to harvest underwater timber. Hicks came on board as chief administrative and financial officer, and Bush assumed the role of unofficial chief operating officer. Recently Naa Lamle Wulff, joined the company’s management team.
They figured each tree was likely to sell for $1,500 to $2,500, and possibly much more (that was in 2005 and today, that figure is higher). But they also saw the company as having two other bottom lines—providing social improvements in the form of jobs for some residents and greater boating safety for others; and reducing the threat to forest environments by satisfying demand for ebony, mahogany, and other hardwoods without removing living trees.
With money running dangerously low 14 days before the Ghanaian Parliament was scheduled to adjourn, Dunn hopped a plane and spent a week in intense discussions. It worked. In February 2006 Parliament unanimously approved the agreement and the Ghanaian government signed the deal giving CSRD exclusive rights to the lake for 3 years, and another 15 years during which it can harvest areas of its choosing. In return, the government is entitled to 20 percent of net profits. Six months later CSRD closed on a $1.5 million round of financing from friends and family, as well as London-based City Capital Corp. In February 2007, the company closed a second round for $12.5 million, this time from a handful of institutional investors, including Goldman Sachs and City Capital Corp.
