Our Team: Meet the 11 Friendly Experts Behind MC Automations
Our team at MC Automations is the group of people who quote, install, commission and service commercial automatic doors and entrance systems across South Africa from our base at Laser Park, Roodepoort. When you phone 010 412 0062 or send an enquiry, one of the people below picks it up, and the same small team follows your entrance from the first measurement to the six-monthly service years later.
We are not a call centre and we do not hand your door to a stranger. Our team is small on purpose: the person who quotes your entrance can walk across the yard and ask the technician who will fit it. Below you can meet everyone, see what each person does, and find out who to speak to for a quote, a breakdown or a service.
Meet our team
Marcel Coetzee
Managing Director
Marcel sets the direction for MC Automations and Coetz™ and makes sure every promise we make is one we can keep. He reads the fine print twice, so you only have to read it once.
Jamie Lee Coetzee
Sales & Customer Support
Usually the first voice you will hear. Jamie turns “the big glass door at the front” into a proper opening size, leaf type and operator choice before your coffee goes cold.
Devin Wood
Service Sales Representative
Devin is the man to call when your automatic door starts having opinions of its own. He books the call-out, sets up the service plan and explains the quote in plain English, possibly with hand gestures.
Aidan du Plessis
Service Sales Representative
Aidan lives in the inbox, turning “my door is making a funny noise” into a booked technician and a clear price. He keeps service plans, call-outs and spares moving, so your entrance spends more time opening than complaining.
Ishmael Mpitso
Supervisor
Ishmael keeps the workshop and the team on schedule, and nothing leaves Laser Park until it has passed his famous squint test. He measures twice, cuts once, then measures again, just to be sure.
Lawrance Maela
Technical Supervisor
Lawrance is the one our technicians phone when a door is being stubborn. He plans installations and checks the work on site before a door is handed over, and he speaks fluent sensor, motor and controller.
Thapelo Maela
Technician
Thapelo installs and services automatic doors, and has a sixth sense for a sensor that is sulking. He leaves your entrance gliding open and shut the way it was meant to.
Stephen Maela
Junior Technician
Stephen is learning every bolt, belt and sensor alongside our senior technicians, and he asks all the right questions. Give him a few years and he will be the one answering them.
Thabiso Masiakwana
Aluminium Installer
Thabiso installs aluminium shopfronts, partitions and frameless glass on our commercial projects, and he trusts his spirit level more than most people. If it goes in by his hand, it goes in straight, square and sealed.
Sello Molahlegi
Junior Aluminium Installer
Sello works alongside our installers on shopfronts, partitions and frameless glass, and he never says no to carrying the heavy end. He is learning the trade one perfectly square frame at a time.
Jafta Mochabela
Manufacturing & Logistics
Jafta helps build the aluminium frames in our workshop, then plays a daily game of Tetris to fit operators, tracks and glass onto the right vehicle. He takes both very seriously, so your order reaches site in one piece.
Every face above works for MC Automations or our sister company Coetz™, and every one of them can be reached through the same number. You can also meet the Coetz™ team, because the aluminium side of the group shares the same people and the same workshop.
How our team is organised
Our team works in four groups, and each group hands over to the next so that nothing falls between two desks.
- Sales and customer support: Jamie Lee Coetzee answers new enquiries, works out what the opening needs and prepares the quotation.
- Service sales: Devin Wood and Aidan du Plessis handle call-outs, repairs, spares and service plans for doors that are already installed, ours and other brands.
- Technical: Lawrance Maela supervises the technicians, Thapelo Maela installs and services automatic doors, and Stephen Maela is learning the trade alongside them.
- Installation, workshop and logistics: Ishmael Mpitso supervises the workshop and team schedule, Thabiso Masiakwana and Sello Molahlegi install aluminium shopfronts, partitions and frameless glass, and Jafta Mochabela prepares and delivers the equipment.
Marcel Coetzee, our Managing Director, oversees all four groups. If something has gone wrong and you feel nobody is listening, our team would rather you asked for him than went quiet.
Who to call, and when
Knowing which member of our team looks after what gets you a faster answer. As a rule of thumb:
- A new entrance or a replacement operator: speak to sales and customer support. Have the opening width, height and a photograph ready. See request a quote.
- A door that has stopped working: speak to service sales and ask for a call-out. Same-day attendance is a Gauteng service; elsewhere in South Africa attendance is scheduled. You can also book a technician online.
- A service plan for one door or a whole portfolio: service sales will set up six-monthly servicing and, where you want it, a written service level agreement.
- A technical question about an existing installation: ask for the technical supervisor, who can check the records for your site.
- A shopfront, glass partition or frameless glass entrance: sales will arrange a site measure with the aluminium installers.
Whichever person picks up, our team logs the enquiry against your site, so you never have to explain the history of your door twice.
What happens when you contact our team
A new entrance follows the same five steps every time. Our team works this way because it keeps quotations honest and installations predictable.
- Enquiry: you send the opening sizes, a photograph and how busy the entrance is. Sales checks whether a sliding or a swing operator suits the opening.
- Survey: where it is needed, a member of our technical team measures the opening, checks the head detail, the floor and the nearest power supply.
- Written quotation: the operator, sensors, locking, leaves, glass and installation are listed separately, so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
- Installation and commissioning: our own technicians fit the operator, set it up against the real leaf and the real traffic, and test every safety sensor.
- Handover and service: you receive the settings record and a service date, and service sales becomes your contact from then on.
Nothing is started until the scope and the price are agreed in writing, and nothing is handed over until the safety sensors have been tested in front of the people who will run the building.
Our team on site
Installation is where an automatic door is won or lost, so our team treats it as the main event rather than the last step. A good operator fitted badly will annoy a building for years; a well-commissioned one is forgotten, which is exactly what you want.
Before our technicians arrive, Lawrance checks the survey notes, the opening sizes and the power supply, and confirms the builder work around the opening is ready. On the day, the team fits the header and operator, hangs and aligns the leaves, connects the sensors and the locking, and then commissions the door.
Commissioning means setting opening speed, closing speed, hold-open time and the force limits for the actual leaf and the actual traffic, then testing every safety sensor in front of building staff. Our team records each setting, so the next technician who visits knows exactly how the door was set up.
We work tidily and we work around your business hours where we can. Retail and medical sites often need a door back in service the same day, and our team plans the job so the entrance is never left open and unattended.
Our team after handover
Most of our team’s week is not new installations; it is keeping existing entrances running. An automatic door is a machine that opens thousands of times a month, and it rewards regular attention.
Servicing is every six months as standard, and more often on high-traffic entrances. On a service visit our technicians check the drive and belt, the rollers and track, the sensors, the locking and the emergency functions, and adjust the settings to suit how the entrance is used now. See automatic door servicing.
Breakdowns go to service sales first. Devin or Aidan will ask a few questions, give you the call-out cost up front and book the first available technician. Many faults are sensors, power or obstructions, and our team will tell you if there is something simple to check before anyone drives out.
Our operators carry a 24-month warranty on the operator. Our team also services and repairs GEZE, dormakaba, ASSA ABLOY, record and TORMAX automatic doors as an independent service provider; we are not an agent or distributor for any of those manufacturers.
How our technicians learn
Every junior on our team learns on the job, alongside a senior. Stephen works with Thapelo and Lawrance on installations and services, and Sello works with Thabiso on aluminium installations. Nobody is sent to a site alone before they are ready, and every new technician learns our commissioning standard first.
Our team prefers to grow people rather than hire strangers for every busy season. It means the technician who services your door next year is likely to be someone who has already worked on it, and who knows how your building uses its entrance.
Safety is part of the job, not an extra
An automatic door moves heavy glass in a space full of people, so our team takes safety settings seriously. Every installation and every service ends with the safety sensors tested, the force limits checked and the door’s behaviour on a power failure confirmed.
Where an entrance sits on an escape route, the specification changes, and our team will raise that at quotation stage rather than on the day. South African standards are published by the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS); where your building needs a fire engineer or a local approval, our team works with your professionals rather than around them.
The workshop at Laser Park
Our team is based at Laser Park in Roodepoort, Gauteng. The MC-125 sliding operator and the MCW-100 swing operator are imported and assembled at our Laser Park facility; we are not a manufacturer of operators and we do not claim to be one. What our team owns is the assembly, the testing, the commissioning standard and the spares held behind every door we install.
The same workshop is home to Coetz™, which makes aluminium windows, doors and shopfront frames. That is why Ishmael and Jafta appear on both team pages: one supervises the workshop and the schedule, the other builds frames and gets every order packed and onto the right vehicle.
Office hours are Monday to Thursday 08:00 to 16:30 and Friday 08:00 to 14:00, and 010 412 0062 is also our 24/7 breakdown line.
Where our team works
Our team installs and services commercial automatic doors across South Africa. Gauteng is home ground, which is why same-day attendance is a Gauteng service. Outside Gauteng our technicians travel to site on a planned date, and breakdown attendance is agreed in writing per site.
Our team also exports and installs entrances in other African countries, quoted per project. See automatic doors near me and automatic doors in Africa for the details.
What our team does not do
A short list, so you do not waste a phone call. Our team works on commercial pedestrian entrances only. We do not work on private homes, garage doors, gates or roller shutter doors, and we do not supply, fit, retrofit or service door closers. If your enquiry is for one of those, we will tell you straight away rather than quote something we do not do well.
A typical week behind the scenes
Monday usually starts with the service diary: which buildings are due, which parts are needed and which vehicle goes where. The workshop prepares operators, tracks and sensor kits for the week’s installations, and anything that arrives damaged or incomplete is sorted before it reaches a site.
Midweek is installation-heavy. Shops and clinics want work done before trading hours or after closing, so start times move around, and the office keeps customers informed if a job runs over. Thursday and Friday catch up on call-outs, quotations and the paperwork that makes the next service visit easier.
None of it is glamorous, but it is the reason a door installed years ago still has a service history that a new technician can read in a minute.
Working with our team on a project
Architects, contractors and facility managers get the most out of our team by involving us early. Share the drawings before the shopfront or the glazing is ordered, and our team can check the clear opening, the header height for the operator and where the power point goes.
- Send the clear opening size, measured on site, not taken from a drawing.
- Tell us the leaf material and roughly how heavy it is.
- Tell us how busy the entrance is at its busiest, not on an average day.
- Tell us whether the entrance is on an escape route.
- Give us a site contact who can confirm access on the day.
With those five things our team can quote properly the first time, and the installation date you are given is one we can keep.
Our team: frequently asked questions
Who will I speak to when I call MC Automations?
A member of our team at Laser Park, not a call centre. New enquiries go to sales and customer support, and breakdowns and service go to our service sales representatives.
Do your own technicians install the doors?
Yes. Our team installs and commissions every MC-125 and MCW-100 we supply. We do not sell an operator in a box and leave you to find an installer.
Can your team service a door you did not install?
Yes. Our team services and repairs GEZE, dormakaba, ASSA ABLOY, record and TORMAX automatic doors as an independent service provider.
How quickly can your team attend a breakdown?
Same-day attendance is a Gauteng service. Elsewhere in South Africa attendance is scheduled, and breakdown terms can be agreed in writing for each site.
Are MC Automations and Coetz™ the same team?
They are sister companies that share a workshop and many of the same people. MC Automations handles automatic doors and commercial installations, and Coetz™ supplies aluminium windows and doors online.
How do I reach a specific person on the team?
Call 010 412 0062 or use the contact page and ask for them by name. Our team is small enough that someone will always know where they are.
Talk to our team
Whether it is a new entrance, a door that has stopped working or a service plan for a whole portfolio, our team is one phone call away on 010 412 0062. You can also request a quote online or send us a message, and the right person from the team above will come back to you.