Leaders with more than 35 years experience in the Wine and Fishing industries.

The evolution of the company started in 1970, in a small town named Windmeul in the Western Cape, South Africa. The owner, locally well known as “POPEYE” Kotze focussed on maintenance and support to the Wine industry. In 1980 Windmeul Expanded to such an extend, that they had to move to a larger building in Wellington, a bigger town nearby. The supervision of Windmeul was handed to Mr. Kotze’s two brothers, Jan and Flokkie. Jan was the former workshop manager of Rock Engineering, a very large engineering company in Cape Town. Through the years Windmeul gained enough experience in the Wine and Fishing industries to develop a large range of equipment suitable for wine and fish processing.

During 1993 Windmeul changed ownership and management. Although ownership changed, the Kotze brothers agreed to remain at the firm for three more years in order to ensure a smooth transition. From 1993 untill November 2006 the owners were: Hennie Du Preez, a well-known farmer from Rawsonville, André De Wit, a well-known attorney from Worcester, Christie Van Zyl, a well-known figure in the local Wine and Fishing industries and Siebert Neethling, well known in the organic fertilizer industry. Since 1 November 2006 the owners are Hennie Du Preez and Siebert Neethling.

Strong trade relations were built since 1993.  One of which was with Vaslin Bucher in France, the biggest supplier of winemaking equipment in the world. We also teamed up with Ozotech Norway in selling and installing ozone generators. We are currently working on some new relations taking us on the road to building and installing systems for water purification and deriving etanol from maize. Since 1993 Windmeul has installed more than 150 membrane presses of all fabricates, 10 tons capacity and above. Large turnkey projects were managed and successfully completed in the wine and fishing industries from Namib on the west coast of Angola all along the coastline to Richardsbay on the east coast of South Africa. These projects were mostly in the fishing industry but in some cases we did some conveyors of various types for the coal industry as well. The last couple of years we focussed on the Poultry and the Mining industries and good relations have been build and a number of projects have been successfully completed.

More inland we did a lot of projects for the wine industry.  Some of these were from the Winelands of the Boland region to Jacobsdal, close to the Orange River in the North. Other projects also include areas from down South East, Ladismith, to Klawer on the West Coast. A Cooker rotor has been installed in Rustenburg and a number of pieces of equipment have been build for several mines in the Gauteng region. We are currently awaiting an order for a large project in KwaZulu Natal.

We ventured a bit into the export market, manufacturing some stemblowers for a winery in China, some fermentors for Niagara falls in Canada and some equipment for a fish factory in Chille. Recently some wine cooling and filling lines have been build and installed in Maputo, several pieces of equipment have been build for a fishing factory in Walvisbay, a Kokka Pump has been exported to Chille while ice handling equipment was build for Central Africa. We also have clients in Luderitz in Namibia as well as a client in Namib in Angola.

Current management structure

Loftus Neethling, MD of Windmeul Engineering & Windmeul Agencies.

Hennie Du Preez, director.

Siebert Neethling, director Transport at Windmeul & MD at Wynland Organic Fertilizer.

Johan Goosen, director Production at Windmeul Engineering.

Deon Kotze, Technical director at Windmeul Engineering.

Okkie Olivier, Technical director at Wynland Organic Fertilizer