Graphic Communications Group - Accra, Ghana

Graphic Communications Group Ltd (GCGL) was established in 1950 in the then Gold Coast by the Daily Mirror Group in the United Kingdom, with Cecil King Jnr as the first head of the company. Its original name was West African Graphic Company Limited. The company published its first newspaper, the Daily Graphic, On October 2, 1950, and followed it up in 1953 with the weekly Sunday Mirror, now called The Mirror.
The company later changed its name from West African Graphic Company Ltd to Ghana Graphic Company Ltd after the Gold Coast gained independence from Britain 1957 and changed its name to Ghana.

By an Act of Parliament the Government of Ghana acquired the company from its private owners in 1962. In 1971, the company became a statutory corporation through a legislative instrument –  

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the Graphic Corporation Instrument, 1971, LI 709. This was in compliance with the Statutory Corporations Act, 1964 (Act 232). The company, therefore, became known as Graphic Corporation.

In response to market demands, the company added Graphic Sports in 1985 and Graphic Showbiz in 1998 to its publications. In 1999, the company took advantage of the Statutory Corporations (Conversion to Companies) Act, 1993, Act 461, to change from a corporation to an autonomous private limited liability company under the companies Code, 1963, Act 179. This resulted in autonomy for the company. Also, as part of the change, the company renamed itself the Graphic Communications Group Ltd and redefined its vision to become a multimedia organisation.

After becoming a limited liability, the company came up with four more publications: Junior Graphic (2000), Graphic Advertiser (2004), Graphic Nsempa (2007) and Graphic Business (2008). However, the company no longer publishes Graphic Advertiser and Graphic Nsempa.

Throughout this period, the company kept improving on its print quality by buying the state-of-the-art press of the time. It started in 1950 with the letterpress printing technology, which was the printing technology available at the time.

In 1976, the company installed the first web offset colour printing machine in Ghana. This was the semi-automatic Harris web offset press manufactured in the USA. The company bought two production lines. One was a four-unit press and the other a two-unit press. However, both could be set to work together if the company needed to print more pages at the same time.

Again, in 1995 Graphic led the newspaper industry in Ghana with an upgraded version of the web offset colour machine, the Heidelberg Harris press. In 2011, the company again changed its printing machine with the installation of the KBA Comet press, which was (and it still is) the first of its kind in Ghana. Alongside the installation of this printing machine, the company also switched from the printing technology that required the use of films to one that requires no film, which is technically called computer-to-plate (CTP).