For Reatile CCO Sunette Smith, energy deals are won long before the negotiating table
Two wind farms in Reatile Group’s portfolio of 29 renewable assets alone cost a combined R7.3 billion to build.
Ask Reatile’s Chief Commercial Officer Sunette Smith what she looks at first on a new transaction before she’s seen the numbers and her answer is immediate.
“The partners, every time.”
“With the right fundamentals, the numbers will be negotiated and shaped to fit but the misaligned partners can drain value from a great transaction regardless of how good the deal looks on paper.”
Smith works on Reatile’s acquisitions, the LNG strategy, through the Zululand Energy Terminal, as well as the construction and operation of its renewable-energy projects.
She is often one of the few women sitting around the table when those deals are being negotiated, and sometimes the only one.
She doesn’t make much of it.
“I’m often one of few women, if not the only woman, at the table, and honestly, I don’t think about it much,” Smith said.
“What I focus on is being the most prepared person in the room and ensuring our position is clear, fair, and commercial. This is how I close deals successfully.”
It is a table she arrived at through years of commercial and financial work across some very different parts of African industry.
Smith spent more than eight years at Murray & Roberts as a Commercial & Financial Director, working across mining and industrial operations in several African markets.
She later became Financial Director at Capital Star Steel, a WBHO subsidiary in Mozambique supplying steel pipe to the oil, gas and mining industries.
She joined Reatile in 2016 as Executive Group Compliance Officer, with a remit spanning compliance, governance, risk and financial management.
By 2020, her work had moved into the group’s renewable-energy portfolio, covering business development, transactions, project implementation and operations.
Today, she is Reatile’s Chief Commercial Officer.
Over the same period, Reatile’s renewable-energy portfolio has grown substantially.
Eight years ago, Reatile held a 15% significant minority equity stake in each of six renewable-energy projects.
Today, it holds significant minority stakes in 29 renewable-energy assets.
In 2024 alone, the company closed 13 transactions.
Smith’s days can mean negotiations, closing deals, flights and board meetings all landing in the same week.
Looking back at her previous three weeks, she joked about “probably leaving too many coffee cups to go cold.”
“Somehow every day brings us closer to where we need to be and I still leave most days more energised than I arrived,” she said.
Building the industry’s collective success
Her work in the sector also extends beyond Reatile. Smith served on the board of the South African Wind Energy Association before becoming its chairperson in 2024..
Chairing the association changed the way she thought about the industry’s collective role.
“Reatile operated with a ‘South Africa Inc’ mindset. That’s part of who we are as a company,” she said.
“But chairing SAWEA taught me that it’s our duty as South Africans to go further than that, to actively support and strengthen industry associations, because the sector doesn’t grow on good intentions alone.”
“Sitting on both sides showed me the gap between believing in the industry’s collective success and actually rolling up your sleeves to build it.”
Partners come up repeatedly when Smith talks about deals.
Reatile’s strategic renewable energy partners includes industry leaders such as Anthem, TotalEnergies, Mulilo and Red Rocket, with Reatile holding equity stakes between 22% to 51% in the projects.
The partners repeat. The offtakers mostly don’t.
Reatile’s portfolio is balanced between the public and private sector offtakers that include Sasol, Air Liquide, Richards Bay Titanium, N0A Group, Sibanye-Stillwater and Discovery Green, to mention a few.
The projects themselves don’t follow a neat template either.
Reatile has 13 large-scale solar farms in its portfolio, and Smith says each build has been different, even when the partners, contractors or customers were familiar.
“Every construction project is a prototype, even when you’ve built the same thing a hundred times before,” she said.
“This applies to transactions too.”
When things go wrong, Smith talks less about the setback than what happens next.
Timelines slip and negotiations hit walls nobody expected. Her approach is to step back, work out what is still within the team’s control and start from there.
“Those messy moments are usually the ones I look back on with the most pride, because they demanded more of us than the easy ones ever did,” she said.
That can also mean changing her mind. Smith said she’d recently done exactly that, during a negotiation prep session.
“Good problem solving isn’t about certainty from the start, it’s about being willing to update your position when new information or ideas show up,” she said.
Negotiations get harder still when deal fatigue sets in and the two sides are far apart on who carries the risk and what each side gets in return.
“The art of perseverance and patience are tested especially when timelines are tight and closing dates are around the corner,” she said.
Working with the right people
Ask Smith to pick the transaction or project that stands out most and she doesn’t name one.
“What stands out more is the people I get to work with every day, our Executive Chairman, Simphiwe Mehlomakulu, the Reatile leadership, the Reatile team and our partners,” she said.
“Simphiwe is candid and clear. You always know where you stand and what’s expected, and he has built Reatile over 23 years on the same values.”
“That clarity matters most on the late-night calls, when negotiations almost fall apart and we manage to pull it back together as a team.“
Being willing to change course or put more time into a difficult deal doesn’t mean everything is negotiable. Reatile has walked away before.
“There are lines we won’t cross to get a deal done. Our values, our investment criteria, our integrity, and making sure the deal is fair and commercial,” Smith said.
“The one thing we are always willing to sacrifice is time and energy. Never the quality of the deal.”
Her view on saying no is just as straightforward: “A fast, honest no beats a slow, uncertain maybe.”
Smith spends much of her working life negotiating deals. But she doesn’t believe that’s where they’re won.
“What doesn’t get talked about enough is that deals aren’t won at the negotiating table,” she said.
“They’re won by the relationships and reputation built over years before that table even exists.”
And once again, she points away from herself.
“Reatile’s ability to close deals today comes directly from the legacy our founders built over 23 years.”
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