Morocco wants to strengthen its dying fishing industry, Tsusho, a Toyota trading subsidiary.
When Lexus builds a ship, it is for the rich. When Toyota is, it will be a tool.
Toyota Tsusho has been in Africa for seventy years; first as Toyota's only official sales representative, and for the last few decades, has started to deal with everything from construction, hospital management, food and chemicals to its portfolio. There are 53 of 54 countries in Africa, and they intend to flourish the economy of the continent.
So they went to Morocco, where fishing has always been one of the most important export industries, but the sector with half a million jobs has started to decline around the turn of the millennium, catches are uneven, and the long-term management of natural resources has become problematic.
Recovery could be started with a thorough research project, but the country does not have the resources to do so, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries of the Moroccan National Fisheries Research Institute has asked Toyota Tsusho to build an oceanographic and fishing research vessel. The five billion yen (approximately 12.5 billion forints) project is financed by a Japanese-Moroccan inter-state loan.
The ship will be built by Mitsu E&S (Japan's largest port crane and shipbuilding company), and from 2021 onwards it will be able to work actively in Moroccan waters, where besides standard research, deep sea life and the environment will be investigated. This project is the first such assignment of Toyota Tsusho in North Africa, but the market is expected to expand soon: the company is planning to launch similar projects in Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon and other countries in North-West Africa.
(Source: vezess.hu / photo: pexels.com)