The Danish subsidiary A/S Gense, owned by Proventus, had a factory in Copenhagen that was to be closed down owing to overcapacity. It was 1979. But the plant was not worn down, and GAB took contact with SIDA, the Swedish Foreign Aid Organization. The plant could well be of use in a developing country, where the need to be able to produce good hand tools is enormous.

SIDA’s reaction was positive and shortly afterwards the plant was loaded into a container and shipped out to Tanzania. It was the start of a completely new business, the sale of technical expertise accumulated and developed at GAB’s factories in Sweden over more than a century. During the financial year 1985/86 Gense International, as the division was called, projected a return of 30m SEK.

Around the factory in Tanzania, there soon flourished a number of smaller companies with different specialties. In particular, tools and agricultural implements were produced, although surgical instruments were also made. GAB had on several occasions had total responsibility for the factories that have been built throughout Tanzania. The company supplied management during the period of establishment and a large number of Tanzanians received technical and administrative training at GAB’s factories in Sweden.

In all, some 300 people worked at the plants GAB had been involved in starting up in Tanzania. During the spring of 1985 GAB received an order from the Tanzania National Development Corporation to rehabilitate one of the company‘s factories, Zana Za Kilimo, in Mbeya. GAB recruited a number of special experts for the project. The total value of the order was for 140 m SEK over a period of five years, and with this as a basis the subsidiary Gense International was set up in 1985, with the express purpose of selling GAB’s expertise to the world abroad.