About Us
About Us
Taurus Chemicals Cape Kelp (Pty) Ltd, trading as Taurus Cape Kelp (Pty) Ltd, harvests and collects red and brown seaweeds in demarcated areas along the coastline of Gansbaai and the East coast of South Africa. Taurus is a manufacturing and trading organisation specialising in seaweeds and phycocolloids in Southern Africa.
Taurus has been involved in the global industry since 1975 and we are also committed to seaweed product development.
Taurus has several divisions involved in the various steps of the harvesting and production, namely the Fronds-, Stipes- and Liquikelp divisions in Gansbaai as well as the Gelidium division based in East London.
Fronds Team
Employees go out on boats to harvest kelp fronds (leaves) in a highly sustainable and ecologically friendly way.
Stipes Team
Employees collect stipes (stems) that wash up along the shore.
Liquikelp Factory
A raw concentrate is extracted from the freshly-harvested kelp and then sent to Afrikelp, an affiliate of Taurus, for further processing.
Gelidium Factory
Gelidium is a genus of red algae which gets picked off rocks on the East coast during low spring tide in the intertidal zones.
Company
Meet Our Team
Dr. Nicole Hart
Managing Director
Thabisa Mpazwa
Director
Xolani Lamla
Director
Company History
Our company originally started by selling cleaning chemicals and in the 1970’s the founder Klaus Rotmann, saw potential in the seaweed industry and all focus moved toward seaweed.
In the past, Taurus was involved in beach cast and cultivating of Gracilaria Verrucosa (BXG), a red seaweed in Luderitz. Gracilaria Verrucosa occurred in the lagoons of Luderitz. To augment natural erratic supplies we cultivated this seaweed on floating net systems in one of the lagoons. The lack of beach cast wash ups caused this division to close in Luderitz as the cultivating of Gracilaria also became very expensive.
We were involved with an international medical research company a few years ago working on Ecklonia Maxima and Laminaria Pallida from Luderitz and Gansbaai.