Multitrade has always been a family business in the truest sense, nearly all of us children had our stint, some brief, some running well over a decade. I had my eye on something else entirely. I wanted to become a chartered accountant. Still, a family business has a way of pulling you in. I spent my part-time study years behind the reception desk at Multitrade before I set off on building a career of my own.

I had grown up watching my father run a business and I respected everything he’d built. But I wanted a different kind of career path. Corporate. The highest level I could get to. Sappi, SABMiller, Nampak, some of the continent’s most recognised names, all manufacturing industries, and a wealth of mentors that shaped how I thought about leadership long before I ever had to practice it. The thing is, I don’t do anything at 100%. It’s always 500%. Long hours, absolute dedication, and of course the high stress that goes with that. Always well remunerated, but giving more than my pound of flesh and still not feeling like I was making a real difference for myself or my family, started to weigh on me.

My dad encouraged me to come make that difference, to chase that feeling, back at Multitrade. So I left corporate and stepped into the role of financial manager with a much deeper sense of purpose.  Two years later, I was MD, deeply entrenched in one of the most technical, demanding, and male-dominated sectors I could have found myself in. To lead in this world – tungsten carbide cutting tools, supplied to engineering and manufacturing industries – you have to earn your place in it. It does not give up its complexity easily. It demands precision, patience, an artful application of those invaluable corporate lessons and the humility to know that in this industry, you never stop learning.

We’ve been the sole Sub-Saharan Africa distributor for Mitsubishi Materials for more than four decades, which tells you something about how we operate and value the building of trusted relationships. Over time we’ve built out our range to include D’Andrea, Union Materials, Moldino, ARNO Werkzeuge, and AutoCrib maintaining a highly held standard that has never changed. When the business you’re now leading was built from nothing by someone you’ve admired your entire life, you make it your purpose to carry the legacy forward, and your obligation to meet the market where it is, not where it was. The responsibility is heavy: to your family, to the people who’ve built their livelihoods inside this business, to the name above the door. But with that weight comes the opportunity to make a meaningful difference.

Leaders in this industry don’t typically talk about people. They talk about product, precision, performance. But I’ve always believed the people are the performance. The team, the customers, the relationships that don’t appear on any balance sheet but hold everything together. I have the right team. People who get it. And my own fulfilment, I’ve come to understand, is rooted entirely in them, from employee to customer to supplier, it’s the human side of this business that drives me.

What I didn’t expect was how much this journey would change me. It continues to be one of the greatest growth experiences of my life. And somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking about what I was building and started understanding what it means. It’s so much bigger than me and that’s the point, legacy isn’t something you declare, it’s something you build quietly, decision by decision, person by person and then one day you look up and realise the most important thing you’ll ever do is make sure it outlasts you.

I’m Pamela, Managing Director of Multitrade Distributors, a Southern African distributor providing world-class tooling solutions to the engineering and manufacturing industries. As sole regional distributor for Mitsubishi Materials for over four decades, our portfolio also features top-tier global names like D’Andrea, Union Materials, Moldino, ARNO Werkzeuge, and AutoCrib.

Carrying a forty-year family legacy forward while keeping our core values firmly anchored in people is my driving purpose. In a highly technical, high-precision sector where most talk about product, I believe the people are the performance.

If you’re a manufacturing or engineering leader looking for a long-term tooling partner built on trusted relationships and precision, or a technical team looking to optimize your operations, let’s start a conversation.

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