WINDHOEK – Connie Sutherland is the new General Manager at Kraatz Steel, a subsidiary of Ohlthaver & List (O&L) Group of Companies. Sutherland holds a three-year engineering diploma from the Pretoria Technikon along with vast experience in the field of engineering, having worked for Iscor for numerous years before starting his own business in South Africa in 1998. Sutherland and his family returned to Namibia in November 2007 to start his own business. He joined O&L in 2012.
Sutherland joined Kraatz Marine 18 months ago as a project manager on the industrial side and says that he particularly enjoyed the project challenges that came his way. “I was surprised to see how well O&L was looking after their employees and I were introduced to the ‘Best Company To Work For’ for the first time in my life and personally think it is a great achievement. Everybody working for O&L should be very proud of being employed by a company with such credentials. I was also surprised to see that the O&L Executive Chairman Sven Thieme, himself is involved in training, educating and motivating the employees at O&L World and I think this creates employee loyalty and pride. At O&L everybody – from top to bottom – is involved in the success of the group,” he says of the O&L Group.
Thus far the greatest challenge Sutherland has faced has been to help Kraatz Marine’s industrial side establish a footprint at the mines and among industry. When looking at the next three to five years, he said: “I will implement the new service centre on the Kraatz Steel platform adding value to our existing range of products, and I will also concentrate on sales by Kraatz Steel through rigorous customer interaction.”
By Staff Reporter