Seaweed is one of the world’s most versatile, yet sustainable, resources – rich in everything from vitamins, to proteins for skin elasticity, to compounds with medicinal properties. That makes it a valuable feedstock for a wide range of products like packaging, food, agriculture, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.
Yet most seaweed harvesting is large-scale and low-value, and much of the liquid component that contains high-value compounds is lost when seaweed is dried during stabilisation and transportation, often resulting in less than 10% of biomass retained as a commercially valid product.
Alga Seaweed aims to develop mobile processing units that sit on the shoreline, where seaweed – freshly harvested from Alga’s floating farms and combined with sustainable amounts of wild-harvested feedstock – can be transformed into stable liquid and solid outputs. That could unlock seaweed’s potential in high-value markets, whilst also creating a renewed livelihood for fishing and rural coastal communities around the world.
Alga needed a way to perform rapid measurements of its products’ key characteristics within its compact mobile processing units, so it could identify how much of the desired compound is present in each batch and provide quality assurance (QA) for customers. Those measurements would also help fine-tune the production process for each seaweed supply strain to maximise yield and consistency.to maximise yield and consistency.
This is made harder by the material characteristics of seaweed – species vary by region and season. A summer harvest might yield biomass suited to fertilisers, while a winter harvest of the same species could contain higher levels of bioactive compounds prized in food and cosmetics.
NPL began tackling this challenge through a Measurement for Business (M4B) project, which laid the groundwork for in-line measurement for these sustainable feedstock.
NPL conducted tests on Alga Seaweed’s liquid samples using two rapid, cost-efficient and user-friendly techniques: Ultra-violet-visible spectroscopy and laser diffraction. The results of these measurements showed potential for capturing key physical and chemical information from the samples, such as particle size, size distribution, chemical species, and concentration of key chemicals.
The measurement results also laid the groundwork for a chemical database of Alga’s seaweed products, which enables Alga to match on-site results to known chemical profiles, helping quickly identify which valuable ingredients are in each batch to ensure product quality.
Whilst early-stage, the NPL-led project forms the foundation of QA methods and procedures for Alga’s seaweed products. That could have a huge impact on Alga Seaweed’s long-term prospects. Alga’s success could also bring wider benefits by enabling producers to gain more from less, reducing the impact of seaweed harvesting on oceans, whilst the onshore units will support coastal economies.
“Rapid measurement methods will be an essential part of our mobile processing units” says Ann Ruddy, Alga Seaweed’s CEO. “It would mean that everyone using them in coastal towns around the world can control their output, directing it to the right market even as the algae changes over the year, and guarantee their customers a quality assured product.
The next step is to validate the data further and develop the in-line measurement.
If all of that is successful, the market opportunity could be huge. Seaweed extracts potentially represent a £2.5-billion market in industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food and agriculture. With its high-quality products and sustainability credentials, Alga could be well-positioned to capture a significant share of this market.
The results of the project have supported grant applications for follow-on work to further advance Alga’s sustainable materials capabilities, and a further collaboration between NPL and Alga is already underway. Knowledge of the QA methods, measurement protocols and chemical database should also benefit wider seaweed processing communities.
Yiwen Pei, Senior Scientist in the Surface Technology Group at NPL, says, “It's an honour for NPL to support projects like this. Sustainable, bio-derived materials like seaweed are critical to the future circular economy, and measurement science and quality assurance are essential to unlocking their potential at scale.”
By developing portable tools that deliver real-time insight into the composition of processed seaweed, we’ll capture more value from each harvest, reduce environmental and ocean impact, support coastal communities, and create sustainable products that can transform many high-value markets. This M4B project has been the critical step on that journey, and we look forward to working with NPL in future to advance the sustainable seaweed industry.
Ann Ruddy, CEO - Alga Seaweed