Sussex Taps
Sussex Taps
(est. 1995, Melbourne)
The story of Sussex Taps is one of a family adventure to build an Australian design and manufacturing business with innovation and sustainability at its heart. Founded by Dutch émigré Nicolaas Johannes van Putten, a watchmaker who extended his obsession with craftmanship into domestic tapware, Sussex Taps is today led by his daughter Vanessa and her husband George.
For Melbourne Now, Sussex Taps presents several pieces from its Calibre collection, first designed in 2013 and updated in 2021, including a wall basin outlet, wall mixer and twin rail shower. The collection is the culmination of more than twenty-five years of knowledge and experience designing high-quality tapware for serial production.
The Calibre collection, as with all Sussex’s products, are made from recycled brass processed at the company’s own foundry in Somerton. Employing recycled materials, renewable energy and sustainable technologies, Sussex is one of the few companies in Australia using robotics for precision polishing and has built a state-of-the-art facility for Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) technology, an advanced coating process that is kinder to the environment than conventional plating and paint. In this process derived from technology pioneered for the aerospace industry, a solid material is vapourised in a vacuum environment and deposited onto the surface of the brass tapware as an extremely thin and durable coating. This unique coating features on the Calibre products shown in Melbourne Now and signals a revolution in local manufacturing.
Sussex Taps is a fully integrated, end-to-end design and manufacturing company and an official member of Climate Active, one of the strictest certification bodies in the world. It is Australia’s first carbon-neutral tapware company.