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PERSONALITY PROFILE
Seaweed sets sail
to see world
By Eamonn Ryan
An era came to an end at
Plumblink on 31 December
when long-time CEO
‘Seaweed’ McFarlane
retired from the company
he had led through its
massive growth phase
of the previous decade.
Plumbing Africa’s
Rory Macnamara and
Eamonn Ryan caught up
with him to discuss his
career before he sailed off to
see the world.
McFarlane describes the highlight of his career
as starting the day French-Moroccan Yannick
Lakhnati was brought in by private equity firm
Ethos to turn Plumblink around, and he in turn
called McFarlane in to be the CEO. Lakhnati was
an extremely direct person, “If you messed up,
you’d know it straightaway,” says McFarlane.
As somebody who’d earned the respect of
Rembrandt’s Johann Rupert, he became a key
mentor of McFarlane’s.
It also heralded one of his greatest challenges: once
the existing senior management’s two-year restraint-
of-trade was complete, there was a mass exodus,
most of whom consequently opened in opposition to
Plumblink. McFarlane had to rebuild an executive team
from the ruins, but fortunately retained a base of Gary
Chandler (Polokwane) and Peter Wilson (KZN). These
proved to be the best of the lot, he claims. “We built a
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January 2020 Volume 25 I Number 11