Sheldon Greybe is the heart and soul of the sales team at MTE. His great humour and positivity keep the team going. We caught up with him to find out a little more about him.
Sheldon Greybe. © Mining and Technical Exhibitions (MTE)
MTE: How long have you been with MTE?
SG: I have been with MTE since 2016. So yeah, it’s been nine years now. Next year will be my 10th year.
MTE: And how have you found the experience?
SG: I started when I was around 21 years old – very young, very inexperienced, and with no exposure to the mining industry or exhibitions. I had a good opportunity here with MTE to grow into the business.
I had my first experience in the Northern Cape – which is one of our most successful expos. I love organising exhibitions, networking with people, making my clients’ businesses more successful, and growing them into the areas throughout my exhibition. So, the experience overall has been amazing. We’ve had some challenges – obviously, we went through COVID-19 and all the rest of it, but that kind of thing just strengthened the team even more and taught me a lot. And now, after COVID, we have just been on the rise in terms of the support from both the mining industry visiting the show as well as the mining suppliers coming through and showcasing their products.
MTE: How have MTE’s exhibitions changed over the nine years you have been involved?
SG: In terms of exhibitors, the biggest clear difference is that we’ve got much bigger support and a larger number of exhibitors at most of the shows. Our big events take place in locations like Rustenburg. We used to have around 80 suppliers at the show. Recently, we have had over 130 suppliers, so we’re getting close to that point where we are doubling the number of exhibitors there.
This means that we’ve got a lot more variety to showcase to the mining operations. From that point of view, it’s been great. We used to be considered more of an engineering show – meaning most of the guys on our stands were in the engineering fields, and not so much in mining, electrical, and so on.
The one thing that we’ve put a lot of effort into has been working with the mines to see what they want to see more of at our exhibitions in terms of automation, mechanical, engineering and safety. We’ve got surveying and exploration people, as well as electrical people at the show. The exhibitions have actually become a lot better for the mines to be able to see everything in their world and what they use. From a visitor point of view, with the mining industry going up and down, a lot of mines need to use contractors because they are cutting costs with regard to internal employees.
A lot of the exhibition visitors are the guys who tend to be the end users. In some cases, we will see more contractors coming through, which is great for our suppliers, as they need to supply the contractor who’s busy doing the work on the mine.
It’s evolved. We constantly speak with the mines about how they do business, figure out whether the suppliers need to see them directly, and which kind of departments are dealing more with the contractors, and then we as a team make sure that we do special invites and targeted stuff for each client. We want to be sure that we target the right audience and that will benefit from who they are trying to meet.
MTE: What is the weirdest, craziest or most unusual thing that’s happened to you at one of these exhibitions?
SG: After our Zambia expo week a few years ago a colleague and I were sharing a room. After a long day in the dust at the expo, we found out there was no water in the rooms. So, we decided to take a swim in our underwear in the pool to cool down.
After we got out of the room with towels in hand and only our jocks on, we realised we left the key in the room and locked ourselves out. We had to walk into reception with a shameful look on our faces in our towels and jocks to request another key!