Albertus Taute

B.Eng (Chemical), University of Pretoria. SABS training in the understanding and implementation of FSSC 22000 Version 6 — the food safety standard Von Tauten Lab’s quality management system is built around.

He began his career developing mobile potable water purification systems, where strict standards and regulations governed safety and reliability. His passion for teaching showed clearly in the operators he trained. He then moved into the food and beverage start-up world, transitioning from engineering (design, construction, and commissioning) into operations. 

Taking products from lab-scale kitchen tests to full-scale factory production grew his admiration for the process’s intricacies and for the careful balance required to produce repeatedly within specification — on an industrial scale — between machine, man, and environment.

Von Tauten Lab came out of his own training. An avid trail runner and functional fitness enthusiast, Albertus has worked through numerous race fuels and protein shakes over the years, and kept arriving at the same three questions:

Why can’t this taste better? What is actually in this, and why is it in here? And if sugar is reduced for health reasons and replaced with artificial sweeteners, can we be confident the alternatives are not detrimental?

Those three questions became central to the company’s formulation brief. The range is deliberately narrow because every product is an intentional step in the search for a better answer.