Tshepo Mashile – Curriculum vitae

Sep 2021 – present
Western Cape

Specialist Wine Buyer

WCellar, Woolworths Foods

Commercial lead, total wine category (April 2026 – present). Previously commercial lead for white, rosé and sparkling wine (2021 – March 2026).

• Lead buyer on the WCellar strategic reset, building a five-year category growth strategy with a 25-member cross-functional team.
• Delivered sales growth across white, rosé and sparkling for four consecutive financial years, ahead of budget, in a tough macro environment.
• Ran the wine category’s promotional trade plan (2023 – 2026) and built its post-implementation review process. Cross-department pairings with bakery, confectionery and horticulture lifted paired wine sales by 50%+ after promotions.
• Launched three new suppliers, one Black-owned and one Black-managed, spotted through social trends, wine festivals and customer and store feedback.
• Moved two suppliers from distributor to direct supply, improving margin, lowering shelf prices and growing listings.
• Approves organoleptic tasting for the range and guides benchmarking and new product development.

Feb 2010 – Jun 2017
Secunda, Mpumalanga

Process Engineer

Sasol Secunda Operations

Daily monitoring and troubleshooting on a plant running heat exchangers, distillation columns and liquid-liquid extraction. Process track lead on multimillion-rand projects.

• Project manager for a multimillion-rand standby heat exchanger installation, compiling the multidisciplinary basic engineering package.
• Business owner representative and engineering track lead on a multimillion-rand nitrogen line compliance project, from formulation to execution.
• Built heat exchanger monitoring tools used to predict reboiler fouling and schedule cleaning shutdowns.
• Led root cause analyses on 15 plant incidents during a major shutdown. The repeat incidents stopped.
• Led nine engineers through column inspections and tray replacements, finishing a week ahead of schedule.
• Mentored engineers as acting team lead and sat on the panel assessing vacation-work students.

Feb 2008 – Jan 2010
Cape Town

Postgraduate Researcher

University of Cape Town

Environmental engineering research in life cycle assessment, presented at the international Life Cycle Management Conference in 2009. Chaired the Engineering and Built Environment Postgraduate Students’ Association, was vice-chair of the UCT Postgraduate Students’ Association, and tutored chemical engineering.