Oceanium: Biorefining UK seaweed to produce sustainable functional protein products

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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.