Questions for the next five years of seaweeds

Last week I had a look at what I thought were the key trends of the past lustrum. This week, let’s look ahead and explore possible futures by means of a series of questions.

1. Biostimulants

The Nature Conservancy and Bain and Co. estimated the total use of seaweeds for biostimulants in 2025 between 360,000 and 710,000 tons. At an estimated growth rate of 10.4%, this would put the inputs needed in 2030 between 590,000 and 1,160,000 tons.

Which species and places will provide the 230,000 to 450,000 tons additional supply needed by the biostimulant industry in the next 5 years?

2. Food

Some questions I have:

• Will China be able to continue adding half a million tonnes of seaweed a year to its national output?

• Will South Korea be able to keep up with the growing demand for gim?

• What proportion of demand will land-based operations fill by 2030?

• Is the hybrid / plant-enriched meat category finally going to take off?

3. Asparagopsis

The newest generation of synthetically manufactured methane reduction feed supplements for ruminants are, as far as I can tell, cheaper to produce than Asparagopsis, as or more efficient in terms of methane reduction (full LCAs of production still unknown), and with a quick and clear regulatory pathway to market.

Despite these seemingly obvious advantages for the synthetic approach, investment has kept flowing towards Asparagopsis-producing companies. Why?

As I see it, there are three angles being worked here to justify the investment.

1. The natural angle: Asparagopsis is a bio-based supplement and this will appeal to certain customers and regulators that don’t trust synthetics.

2. The synergy angle: Asparagopsis has hundreds of bioactive metabolites; beyond the methane, there are lots of other health benefits to the animal we are yet to discover.

3. The biorefinery angle: We’ll be able to reduce the price of our feed supplement by extracting other valuable compounds from our seaweed, thus making us price-competitive with synthetics.

It does seem likely that, much like the wider feed supplement market, the methane reduction / FCR improvement niche will not be a winner-take-all market, but instead will allow for a variety of approaches to take market share. Will Asparagopsis be able to take some, and if so, how much?

4. Restoration finance

Recent changes in carbon markets have driven valuations for high-integrity nature-based assets to premium levels. Growing pools of capital are investing in nature projects, both for the carbon credits as well as the other value flows they generate (operational cost reduction, portfolio risk / inflation hedge, asset revaluation, …).

The ocean, difficult to own and challenging to visit, has not seen much investment. But by now it has become evident that opportunities to develop high-quality investable nature projects are limited. The carbon market has already essentially split into institutional-grade assets that command a 4-10x price premium, and low quality alternatives chasing speculative capital and philanthropy.

The fact that Europe’s most prominent kelp restoration and afforestation organisations (SeaForester, Restorae, SeaGrown) have formed as businesses instead of NGOs signals the arrival of revenue-generating restoration as a viable model, mirrored by other ocean restoration businesses like Oyster Heaven or Coral Vita.

Private capital pools for nature finance topped $100 billion in 2024. Could seaweed restoration capture some of that money? For that to happen, the real question that needs to be answered is: can restoration projects vault the non-trivial hurdle of verification?

If yes, verified high-integrity status would spur on greater capital allocation, which could lead to the development of a flurry of new restoration projects. If no, restoration projects will remain retail-scale, funded by more limited government, philanthropy and corporate social responsibility budgets.

5. Europe / North America

What will the seaweed industry in Europe and the US look like in five years time? That’s a big question that we need break down:

• Processing: Europe’s deindustrialisation vs US re-industrialisation?

• Applications: what mix between food, pet food, biostim, feed, personal care, biomaterials, coatings, packaging, dyes, …?

• Species: Ulva’s continued rise? What is sugar kelp for?

• Et cetera

A lot of things to think about. I could go on. So let me instead hone the question. Here is what I am really wondering: in 2030, will seaweed cultivation have doubled? Or will Europe and North America evolve to become pure innovation hubs, with manufacturing and biomass production happening elsewhere?

6. Biomaterials

Companies producing plastics alternatives, coatings, textiles and other biomaterials currently use (I’m guessing) hundreds of tonnes of seaweed-derived inputs on aggregate. Some are seeing success now; I think we can expect this number to grow to thousands of tonnes by 2030.

Does that mean they will start to have to scramble for material with the lowest-cost options already spoken for? No. The first tens of thousands of tonnes have been locked in - no immediate supply crunch for them.

But it does spark a wider question: what is the biomass mix of the future - and what role will algae play in it? The energy transition has been underway for about fifty years, and the contours of a future energy mix are becoming clear: renewables, nuclear, hydrogen, et cetera. Exact details are still forming, but there is a road map. For the bioeconomy, however, we don’t have a clue yet. Where is the balance between agricultural waste, mycelium, sugar cane, algae, recycled plastic, brushwood, food processing side streams, et cetera? Nobody knows.

7. Where will industrialisation take place?

If biomass is not the immediate big issue for pioneering biomaterials companies, is there a danger then that Chinese companies, so far largely absent, will move in and undercut them? Of course, although it does look like Chinese entrepreneurs are waiting until the market is more mature before making their move.

Kathleen Drew-Baker enabled the Asian nori industry, Max Doty and Marine Colloids kickstarted the Asian carrageenan industry. Will new applications like nanocellulose, asparagopsis, plastics alternatives and biomaterials ultimately move to Asia as well?

See you in 2030.

*****Addendum: what’s new at Phyconomy?****

To close off this series of newsletters, some news about the website: I have added a seaweed conference calendar. Also new is a directory of seaweed consultants: some of the world’s greatest experts on seaweeds are on it - do check them out if you need help with any of your projects.