At the Entrepreneurial Intervarsity Competition finals of 19 September 2019, a 31-year-old old doctoral candidate at the University of the Free State, Christopher Rothmann, walked away with a joint runner-up prize alongside a University of Cape Town student. The competition adjudicators made the runner-up decision on account of the high quality of contending businesses in the Existing Technological Business category (Category 2).
Rothmann, who is completing his Ph.D. in Biotechnology, runs a company by the name of LiquidCulture with Dr. Errol Cason, an Animal Breeding lecturer in the University of the Free State’s Faculty of Agriculture. Together they started the company in 2018.
LiquidCulture produces yeast in its most pure liquid form, a venture unique to their business and the first of its kind on the African continent. Says Rothmann: “Our yeast is mainly used by breweries for the fermentation of beer. As we always say ‘brewers make sugar water but yeast makes beer’.” He adds that they have also started supplying bakers and distillers with their product.