Notes from the 2024 SSIA Conference

Last week, some of the seaweed industry gathered for another conference hosted by Rhianna Rees and the SSIA in Oban. It’s always good to see familiar faces in this still relatively small industry where most people seem to know each other—a recurring highlight of these events. Here are some of the key highlights and reflections:

Seaweed for Biostimulants: A Cash Crop Opportunity

Seaweed's potential as a biostimulant is gaining traction, offering a promising revenue stream for the industry in the short term. According to a report by Data Bridge Market Research, the global seaweed extracts biostimulant market is projected to reach USD 2.94 billion by 2031, growing at an impressive CAGR of 13.1%.

Biostimulants hold great promise due to their high profit margins—only a small amount of seaweed is needed per unit of product, making them financially efficient.

Promising trials were shared by speakers such as Kyla Orr, Co-Founder at Kelp Krofters, which demonstrated significant improvements in crop yields and quality—ranging from barley to tomatoes. However, the industry must address the demand for extensive, evidence-backed data to encourage widespread adoption by farmers. More trials and research are crucial to sealing the deal of seaweed as a reliable option for biostimulants.

Do Biostimulants Deserve the Spotlight?

While biostimulants should be a key focus for the industry right now, offering the best chance for short-term financial gains, is this really what sparked our initial excitement about seaweed? The true excitement surrounding seaweed lies in its potential to revolutionise food supply chains, materials, and biotechnology. Discussions at the SSIA conference highlighted its applications in alternative proteins, innovative materials, and industries like cosmetics and medicine. The next, and arguably more exciting, phase of the seaweed industry lies in the extraction of high-value, versatile compounds like alginate, as well as unique compounds found exclusively in seaweed, such as fucoidan.

High-Value Compounds and Reducing Unit Cost

Talks emphasised the potential of high-value compounds, such as those discussed by Charles Bavington at Oceanium, who highlighted, as he had at Seagriculture in Torshavn earlier this year, the unique polysaccharides found in brown seaweed. He argued that the presence of such distinctive compounds can justify the higher value that needs to be assigned to seaweed to make its extraction commercially viable. Fucoidan, one of the most notable seaweed-specific polysaccharides, exemplifies this potential, offering a range of health benefits—including support for gut health, anti-aging properties, immune system enhancement, and even potential applications in cancer treatments.

However, for these innovative applications to become mainstream, significant challenges remain—chiefly the high unit cost of seaweed. High labour costs are a primary factor driving the high unit costs in Europe. However, in countries like South Korea and Japan, where the seaweed industry is more established and labour costs are only slightly lower than in Western Europe (though comparable to some parts of Eastern or Southern Europe), the unit cost of producing brown seaweed is about half that of the average European seaweed farm. This data is somewhat promising as it indicates there is still a lot of potential for European seaweed farms to reduce their unit cost.

The chart presented by Charles below illustrates that the current prices of the brown seaweed species Saccharina japonica and Undaria pinnatifida, both cultivated in South Korea and Japan, are approximately half the price of Saccharina latissima, the primary brown seaweed species cultivated in Europe.

How do we get to this next phase of the seaweed industry?

To realise the potential of seaweed’s diverse compounds, two key strategies must be embraced:

1. Scaling Up

Scaling up production is essential to making seaweed-derived compounds commercially viable. Industry leaders like Ocean Rainforest have consistently emphasised this point. Their message is straightforward: without larger-scale operations, the unit cost of seaweed cannot be reduced, and the industry will fall short of its potential to revolutionise biomass production for novel compounds. Scaling up is the foundation for transforming seaweed into an economically competitive resource.

2. Farmers Need to REALLY Know THEIR Seaweed
Farmers must have a (really) detailed understanding of their seaweed, as the compounds it produces vary widely based on numerous factors, including environmental conditions, species, strain, and season. This requires meticulous tracking of data—operational, environmental, and compositional—to determine the optimal processes for producing compounds demanded by end buyers.

Collaboration is equally important. Comprehensive data collection must span the entire value chain, from breeding programs to cultivation and processing, ensuring that farmers and producers have the insights needed to meet market demands. The better the data, the better the opportunities for refining practices and maximising value.

Conclusion

Overall, the outlook for the seaweed industry is promising, with biostimulants poised to become a significant source of revenue for the sector. However, it’s important not to lose sight of the broader vision that initially sparked excitement about seaweed—its potential to revolutionise diverse areas of the biotech sector. Realising this potential requires a continued focus on scaling up production, data, and collaboration across the industry.