POSITION AND MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES AT ROBIT

My position at Robit is as the Managing Director of the Southern African region, where I am responsible for leading the sales team and meeting the sales targets to reach our growth goals. This means that I make sure that Robit’s global processes are followed in the region and the regional pricing is based on the global guidelines. On top of this, I am responsible not only for our inventory management program, including forecasting accuracy, receivables (collections), and distribution, but also for the Profit and Loss statement, to ensure that we remain profitable.

EXPERIENCE ON THE FIELD

To this day, I have spent 26 years in the hard rock drilling industry, with extensive focus on cost-per-meter contracts. The past 7 years I have been with Robit sales and marketing.

KEY MARKET TRENDS ON THE FIELD FOR THE NEXT FEW YEARS

Mining is and will remain the main focus for Robit SA. As we are selling mainly to the direct market, we need to maintain a high quality and acceptable lead times. As mentioned previously, the demand for cost-per-ton and cost-per-meter contracts remains high on our customers’ agenda, with the reasoning being that this ensures a high level of involvement on the supplier’s side.

HOW DO ROBIT’S ONGOING ACTIONS SUPPORT THE CUSTOMERS AND THEIR CURRENT CHALLENGES?

Years and years of selling face-to-face with a firm product knowledge, not letting our customers down, and never overcommitting availabilities (after all, nothing sells like stock!) have helped us build close and strong relationships. Mining is all about cost effectiveness and, therefore, Robit Rocktools will always be a part of a measured commodity in both efficiency factors of provided products, cost per ton and cost per meter. The implementation of new, game changing products is essential as it will set us apart from our competition.

HOW DO YOU SEE ROBIT IN 2021 – WHAT ARE YOUR MAIN EXPECTATIONS ON YOUR FIELD?

There have been big improvements over the past few years. That being said, we continue to focus on improving our on-shelf availability levels and product performance.

For more information: Franco Deventer, firstname.lastname@robitgroup.com

 

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