Event Lighting is a brand new rental and production company in Centurion near Pretoria, South Africa, offering lighting equipment and design services for all production scenarios plus a fund of knowledge and experience from its founders – Peter Rieck of Rieck’s Lighting and Henry Jenkins of Eventech.
The joint venture has started with a serious investment in Robe – with 12 Robe Pointes and 24 of the new Spikie – small, super-fast LED WashBeams – to the rental inventory together with LED PAR cans – all supplied via DWR Distribution.
Rieck’s Lighting and Eventech will also continue to operate as normal however Event Lighting is a new and separate company running in parallel to both of these, adding an exciting and fresh dynamic to the South African rental and production scene. Eventech does not own any lighting gear and was continually cross-hiring equipment for the events they were designing and producing. Launching a new and separate lighting company made total sense.
Wynand Veldsman will be overseeing the day-to-day running of the new company. He’s a well-known industry face having worked at Eventech for the past year and prior to that, at Gearhouse South Africa and at C&S in Cape Town.
With a focus on corporate events and shows, Event Lighting purchased Robe Pointes for their all-round functionality. Peter, a longtime fan of the brand who has used Robe fixtures for a few years to light a string of high profile TV productions and live events. “The Pointes can do fantastic beam work, they unlock a vast amount of creativity and have become an industry standard in SA,” said Henry.
The Spikies are the first purchase of the new Robe fixture – launched at Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt in April – in South Africa, following the first sale into southern Africa which DWR announced with rental company Mikel-Jes in Namibia a month earlier.
Event Lighting’s Spikies went out on their first event, The Queens Picnic at Melrose Arch, Johannesburg just a couple of days after delivery to their warehouse. A short time after, the Pointes were on their first Event Lighting show – ‘Ignite’ – a 50th birthday celebration for South African music producer and key influencer Lindelani Mkhize.
