With its extensive nutrient-rich coastline and world-leading expertise in industrial biotechnology innovation, marine science, and aquaculture, Scotland has the potential to lead the UK and the western world in the development of a sustainable seaweed farming industry. Sustainably farmed seaweed can be processed in innovative biorefineries, producing multiple high-value products for food, nutraceutical, cosmetic, and biomaterial applications.
However, scaling of seaweed biorefinery processing faces a significant bottleneck. Seaweed is highly perishable and freshly harvested seaweed must be bio-refined within 24 h of harvesting. Since the harvest period for farmed seaweed is only 6-8 weeks, biorefining the entire harvest in this window would require the installation of prohibitively high CAPEX biorefineries.
Seaweed stabilisation should allow for year-round processing. However, the industry standard remains drying and freezing. This is not only highly energy intensive, but prohibitively expensive for sustainably farmed UK seaweed. Currently, UK-based seaweed drying and freezing costs c.£100/wet-tonne and £40/wet-tonne. With the UK having amongst the highest industrial energy costs in the world, there is a significant impetus to develop less energy-intensive and, thus, less costly stabilisation processes.
Although stabilised sustainably farmed Scottish seaweed currently costs £2,500/wet-tonne (with farms at <1 tonne production scale and relying on drying/freezing for stabilisation), scaling of sustainably farmed seaweed production to c.20,000 wet-tonnes/year and reducing the stabilisation cost to <£10/wet-tonne are expected to reduce the stabilised sustainably farmed Scottish seaweed price to £570/wet-tonne, which will deliver technoeconomic biorefinery process viability.
Consequently, low-cost (<£10/wet-tonne), low-energy, and environmentally benign stabilisation processes are urgently required to unlock year-round sustainably farmed seaweed supply for biorefinery processing.
KALY is a Skye-based kelp farming and primary processing start-up, with a licensed 400 wet-tonne seaweed farm in Loch Bay and options for a further 3,000 wet-tonnes, harvesting 0.15 wet-tonnes in pilot-scale trials in May 2024\. Oceanium is an Oban-based seaweed offtaker, with proprietary biorefinery process technology to extract maximum value from sustainably farmed seaweed, processing 75 wet-tonnes of UK/European sustainably farmed seaweed in 2023 into commercially ready bioactives and fibre for food, nutraceutical, and cosmetic applications, with additional biomaterial (including packaging and inks) applications in development. The James Hutton Institute (JHI) is a Dundee-based crop and environmental research institute with expertise in seaweed compositional analysis.
With public funding through Bio-based Manufacturing, Scotland - Rd2 CR&D, KALY, Oceanium, and JHI will develop and scale up low-cost, low-energy, environmentally benign chemical stabilisation strategies for sustainably farmed kelp that are compatible with seaweed biorefining.
In the UK and Europe less than 90% of the population consume enough fibre in their diet. Alongside this large-scale public health issue, there is pressing need to reduce the climate (25% of global GHG emissions) and biodiversity (86% of species extinction risk) impact of food production.
SeaFibre project is developing a solution to provide a novel dietary fibre ingredient that simultaneously reduce the environmental impact of food products. Oceanium Ltd, based in Scotland, has developed a unique complex fibre product from seaweed called OCEAN HEALTH NUTRA, which is high in dietary fibre and contains multiple other valuable nutrients. This product is manufactured using mild processing techniques from brown seaweed (kelp) farmed in the north Atlantic; a plant resource that requires no land, fresh-water, pesticides, or fertiliser for production and which enhances biodiversity while mitigating ocean eutrophication (fuelled by run-off from terrestrial farming). Oceanium uses unique biorefinery technology to convert whole farmed seaweed into OCEAN HEALTH NUTRA, bioactive supplements, cosmetic ingredients, feed ingredients and innovative materials/ packaging solutions and is working towards zero-waste and net-zero processing.
In SeaFibre project Oceanium, who are members of the Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club (OIRC)**,** will develop and test prototype plant-based meat, bread and smoothies fortified with OCEAN HEALTH NUTRA fibre. Project partners at University of Reading will test the digestibility and potential gut health benefits of OCEAN HEALTH NUTRA using simulated gut models. Project success will unlock the future development of OCEAN HEALTH NUTRA as a mainstream dietary fibre ingredient, with potential beneficial public-health impact, generating annual revenues of \>£20M by 2030, enabling the growth of large scale seaweed farming in the north Atlantic, creating jobs in fragile coastal communities and capturing innovation value for the UK economy.
Seaweed is receiving unprecedented levels of interest in the UK and Europe, with extensive, nutrient-rich coastlines and world-leading expertise in biotechnology innovation, marine science, and aquaculture. Seaweed is highly productive and does not compete for land resources or consume freshwater, fertilisers, or pesticides. Kelp extracts offer an attractive alternative food source, comprising protein, fibre, minerals, vitamins, and bioactive compounds.
The nascent European sustainably farmed seaweed industry has potential to accelerate from 1,450 tonnes/year (2019) to over 8 million tonnes/year by 2030, creating 115,000 jobs and scaling the European seaweed industry to £8.0billion/year.
Oceanium is a female-led start-up with a vision to become the world's largest processor of sustainably farmed seaweed, establishing Build-Own-Operate seaweed biorefineries in the UK, Europe, and North America. We have developed an innovative seaweed biorefinery process, which extracts maximum value from sustainably farmed kelp by co-extracting food ingredients, high-value nutraceuticals, and biopackaging materials.
We are leading the development of UK, European, and North American sustainably farmed seaweed industries, as founding members of Seaweed for Europe and active members of the Safe Seaweed Coalition. In 2022, we will purchase around 140 tonnes of sustainably farmed seaweed from the UK, Ireland, France, Norway, and Faroe Islands, representing c10% of European sustainably farmed seaweed supply. We measure our impact against 6 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our investors include the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Green Angel Syndicate, and Kingfisher Capital. In the last year, we have grown our team from 8 to 17 people and are currently recruiting for 2 more positions.
With Innovate UK funding, we will adapt our biorefinery process to extract high-purity functional proteins from kelp and explore the potential of a new, supplementary biorefinery feedstock, waste sea lettuce. Sea lettuce has higher protein content than kelp, up to 33% (dry weight) compared to up to 20%. Sea lettuce blooms appear across the UK coastline and are a growing concern, driven by climate change and coastal eutrophication. Blooms are unsightly, smelly, and hazardous, impacting local biodiversity and the tourist trade, even forcing beach closures. Multiple coastal local authorities (including Jersey, Poole, Torbay, and Thanet) pay to collect sea lettuce for disposal via land-spreading, composting, landfill, or dumping at sea. Sea lettuce is often too contaminated to spread on farmland, while composting, landfill, and sea-dumping are expensive. By extracting protein from sea lettuce, Oceanium will transform waste into value, protecting our coastline and meeting demand for next-generation alternative proteins.
Oceanium, a biotech start-up based at the European Marine Science Park in Oban, is developing home-compostable, circular lifecycle biopackaging derived from sustainably farmed seaweed using innovative green chemistry and proprietary biorefinery technology. The demand for circular life-cycle bio-packaging in the UK greatly exceeds supply. Oceanium's zero-waste biorefinery approach maximises the value of whole seaweed, allowing development of seaweed-based, home-compostable/marine safe packaging to replace fossil-fuel based plastics. Our seaweed biorefinery extracts maximum value from sustainably farmed kelp, creating a "pyramid of value"(Cefas\_2016) ranging from added-value commodities such as food ingredients and biopackaging to high-value nutritional products.
Oceanium's circular life-cycle seaweed based material is designed to be disposed of with food waste for compost for soil health or anaerobic digestion for energy, which dovetails with the UK Waste Management strategy calling for commercial/residential food-waste collection throughout the UK by 2023\.
With funding from Innovate UK and Sky Ocean Ventures(105400), we have demonstrated experimental proof-of-concept(TRL3) for the conversion of seaweed-based biopackaging compounds into products: home-compostable film and board as a replacement for packaging with no end-of-life solution(e.g., contaminated with food). We have developed a patentable packaging formulation and will file patents in summer 2020\.
Here, with support from Innovate UK, and working with established converters, we will scale up our biopackaging process to pilot-scale production of biopackaging film and board products. We will optimise the technical performance of our home-compostable seaweed-derived biopackaging products and integrate our seaweed biopackaging material into existing packaging production plant/converter facilities, demonstrating that we can deliver sustainable packaging at scale. Our products will be 100% home-compostable and marine-safe according to EN 13432, ASTM D6400 and Vincotte OK Compost Home standards.
Importantly, unlike competing land-based bio-feedstocks, farmed seaweed does not require cleared land, fresh water, insecticide or fertilisers and is sourced regionally. Oceanium's impact mission is to enable sustainable seaweed farming in the UK. Seaweed farms sequester carbon and absorb excess nutrients, bioremediating ocean acidification and eutrophication, while also providing alternative livelihoods for fishermen and creating jobs across the value chain in coastal regions. With its extensive, nutrient-rich coastline and world-leading expertise in biotechnology innovation, marine science, and aquaculture, the UK has the potential to lead the development of the sustainable seaweed farming industry in Europe. With Innovate UK support, Oceanium will support the UK's ambition to become a world leader in sustainable packaging, tackling plastic-waste and climate crises, and catalysing the growth of the UK sustainable seaweed farming industry.
The seaweed value chain offers huge growth potential for UK coastal communities post COVID-19 whilst addressing the climate emergency. Farmed seaweed is a sustainable biomass source with applications in food & nutrition, packaging materials, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Seaweed farms sequester carbon and absorb excess nutrients, bioremediating ocean acidification and eutrophication, while providing alternative livelihoods for fishermen and creating jobs across the value chain. This project will demonstrate the economic and environmental potential of the farmed seaweed value chain at scale by developing efficient, scalable and sustainable seaweed farming, harvesting and biorefinery process for converting seaweed into value-added food (protein & fibre), nutrition (fucoidan, beta-glucan, vitamins & minerals), and home-compostable biopackaging products.
The project is a collaboration between KelpCrofting, a seaweed farming company based on the Isle of Skye, Efficiency Technologies, a bio-process equipment innovation company based in Milton Keynes, and Oceanium, a seaweed processing company based in Oban. This collaborative project seeks to apply innovation across the value chain to demonstrate its potential at scale. Project success will catalyse investment in UK seaweed farming and coastal biorefineries. By demonstrating the farmed seaweed value chain at scale, we will:
• catalyse growth of nascent UK sustainable seaweed farming industry to support UK coastal communities post COVD-19
• improve the future resilience of UK fisheries and aquaculture sectors
• support UK to meet climate targets
• reduce UK reliance on fossil fuels and imports
• enhance marine biodiversity
• tackle plastic-waste crisis & support packaging industry to transition to circular economy
• support UK transition to plant-based foods
Biorefineries are integrated facilities that convert renewable biomass raw materials (e.g., wood, crops, manure) into fuel, power, and chemicals. Biorefineries have the potential to play an important role in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, and delivering sustainable, carbon-neutral biobased products and energy to meet the needs of our rising global population.
Seaweed has recently received significant attention as a potential biomass raw material that does not require land during production; thus, avoiding the "fuel versus food" debate in Europe associated with land-based biomass raw materials such as oilseed rape. In addition, seaweed production does not require freshwater, fertiliser, or insecticides.
However, numerous studies to date (Bruhn et al., 2011; Adams et al., 2017) have demonstrated that the increased costs associated with cultivating, harvesting, transporting, and processing seaweed make seaweed uneconomic as a sole source of biofuel (value of less than £1/kg; Cefas, 2016). A biorefinery approach addresses this economic challenge by co-extracting biochemicals from seaweed. These biochemicals create a "pyramid of value" for seaweed (Cefas, 2016), encompassing added-value commodities (value of £1-£5/kg), speciality products (value of £5-£1,000/kg seaweed), bioactives (value of more than £2,000/kg), and special applications (more than £5,000/kg).
Based in the European Marine Science Park in Oban, Oceanium is a biotech start-up developing an innovative seaweed biorefinery process for the sustainable production of food ingredients, nutraceuticals, and biopackaging from UK farmed kelp. Kelps are large brown seaweeds, which grow in dense growths or forests, providing habitats for numerous invertebrates, fish, marine mammals, and birds.
With funding from Innovate UK/Sky Ocean Ventures, we are currently developing the biorefinery process steps for producing marine-safe biopackaging from farmed kelp, as a replacement for plastics. We rely on sustainably farmed kelp to avoid the environmental damage potentially associated with large-scale wild harvesting of kelp.
In this proposed project, we will develop the biorefinery process steps for co-extraction of protein and fibre from kelp, delivering novel alternative protein and fibre sources. We will sell these new products to key speciality chemicals/food ingredient suppliers, who are urgently looking for new, sustainable, clean-label, allergy-free, and vegan sources of protein and fibre to meet growing consumer demand.
By developing the processing infrastructure for extracting value from seaweed, we will enable and support the sustainable seaweed farming industry in the UK/EU to scale.
The Oceanium project is focused on developing innovative, circular life-cycle bio-packaging derived from sustainably sourced seaweed to replace single use fossil-fuel based plastics to meet the growing consumer, government and corporate demand for sustainable packaging.
Oceanium's focus is a home-compostable/marine safe bio-film and bio-container designed for food packaging. Seaweed is an environmentally friendly feedstock as it does not require cleared land, fresh water, fertiliser or insecticide. Seaweed acts as a carbon sink sequestering greenhouse gases and it absorbs excess nitrogen and phosphorous from surrounding water bio-remediating ocean eutrophication. Oceanium will launch its Oceanware bio-packaging material in a timely manner enabling governments and corporates to meet ambitious 100% recyclable, reusable and compostable targets. Importantly, Oceanium's development of innovative seaweed based materials will provide jobs and economic opportunities throughout the products' circular value-chain whilst accelerating the transition to a sustainable economy.