How much seaweed does Indonesia actually produce?
Also: seaweed food safety laws are full of holes + funding news roundup
Who has never reorganized the facts a bit to spruce up their image? I plead guilty. So if Indonesia’s seaweed statistics do not exactly match up with reality, I won’t judge. But, like a lover cheated on, I want to know the truth, however much it hurts.
And it is at least a little bit painful. FAO reports 8.5 million tons of seaweed (wet weight) harvested in 2019. However, using a different approach, researchers came up with 450,000 ton (dry weight) instead. Iain Neish includes the Philippines and presents an estimate of 370-480 thousand tonnes. Assuming this refers to 35% dried content (correct me if I am wrong), that would come to just 1.3 million tons, 6 times less than reported by FAO.
Leaving aside the size of the numbers for now, what is clear is that, after several decades of explosive growth, the tropical seaweed industry has stagnated. Factories are producing under capacity. The world simply doesn’t need more phycocolloids (it’s worth watching Iain Neish’s full presentation to understand those dynamics).
To bring renewed growth to the tropical seaweed industry, biorefineries that use 100% of the biomass to put out a diverse range of products will be essential. While several new products from cottoni and spinosum seaweeds are already in the market, like biostimulants, feed additives and bioplastics, more innovation is needed. For that, this time, look to India.
Seaweed food safety laws are full of holes
Seaweeds are healthy, right? Yeah, sure, but they also have a recognized capacity for the bio-accumulation of hazardous substances. Take for instance the inorganic arsenic content in hijiki (Sargassum fusiforme), an ingredient in East Asian cuisine that is now being advised against by health authorities in eg. Singapore and Hong Kong.
Despite the size of the seaweed trade, there is presently no codex, standard or guideline that specifically addresses food safety in seaweeds. Although some private standards have been recently introduced (e.g. by ASC/MSC), they do not address food safety directly or in sufficient depth. There is, therefore, a significant regulatory gap concerning food safety in seaweed that requires attention.
Take for instance the EU. Currently more than 150 algae species are consumed in the EU, of which only 20% are approved under the EU Novel Food legislation. In Norway, seaweeds are not even classified as food, although the Norwegian government is now about to change that (NO).
A recent review on the evidence of seaweed food hazards by the FAO is trying to fill the gap with a set of recommendations to policy makers looking to develop guidelines, standards and laws.
But we need more science to fill in the blanks. About the bioavailability of iodine in brown seaweeds for example, the shelf-life of sugar kelp, the uptake of PCBs by algae in the Salish Sea or the depuration of heavy metals in pond-grown Gracilaria ( and should we be looking for bisphenol A as well in RAS?).
Funding news
On the back of $3.1M in grant funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada to set up a 100-hectare farm and adjoining agrifeed processing facility, Cascadia Seaweed is now crowdfunding an extra $2.5M through Frontfundr.
In the UK, Seagrown also received a $3.1M government grant to trial their novel offshore cultivation method and bring their prototype fully-mechanised seeding, harvesting and handling machine into production. They have calculated 46% capital savings and 62% running cost efficiencies in comparison to traditional longline cultivation.
Two more UK funding rounds: Seaweed Generation received $1M pre-seed from international VCs to work out automated offshore harvesting and cultivation. Their first approach is the Sargassum-scooping Algaray. And PlantSea got a $500,000 grant to continue work on their seaweed-based packaging.
Marinova announced a $3.2M expansion for its fucoidan manufacturing facility in Tasmania, Australia. And in Sweden, Kobb, previously known as Bohus SeaCulture, has raised capital (SE) to go from test cultivation to full-scale operation.
Finally, circling back to Indonesia, blended capital from Swiss Re Foundation and Deliberate Capital is going to MARI Oceans to help them fix South Sulawesi’s highly volatile output prices and fractured and inequitable value chain.
Really interesting article! Could you link or share which FAO report you are referring to when discussing the discrepancy in production data? Thank you in advance!