July 13, 2021

photo credit: Sea6 Energy

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

We keep peeling back the onion, as it were, on seaweed – discovering layer upon layer of uses and benefits across the food, feed, biofuel, plastics, and climate change mitigation verticals. Its potential is huge, but seaweed cultivation and processing are young. Despite this, or rather, because of this, forward-thinking investors are identifying seaweed as a growth prospect, and are deploying capital in support of its industry pioneers. 

Sustainable aquaculture and related tech investor Aqua-Spark announced that it has led a $9 million Series B for India-based Sea6 Energy – a vertically integrated seaweed producer, processor, and developer – and the only fully integrated tropical sea agricultural and sea plant-based product manufacturing company in the world. 

This investment marks the 21st investment made by Aqua-Spark, which has EUR 195 million (US$230 million) in assets under management across complementary companies, technologies, and inputs all working toward more sustainable production of aquatic life, noted the investor.

“Investing in seaweed production has been a priority for us since we launched in 2015,” said Mike Veilings, and Amy Novogratz, co-founders, Aqua-Spark. “We expect it to play a big part in the future of aquaculture, but, until now, we hadn’t come upon an operation that was both economically viable and was able to produce at scale.”

Founded in 2010 by Sailaja Nori, Nelson Vadassery, Sowmya Balendiran, and Shrikumar Suryanarayan at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT Madras) Sea6 Energy has developed the proprietary SeaCombine, a fully mechanized cultivation system able to harvest and replant seaweed simultaneously in deep ocean waters, resulting in cost competitive production at scale. The company also has developed proprietary processing technologies to convert fresh seaweed into novel products for the agriculture, animal health, food ingredient, bioplastic, and renewable chemical industries.

“Sea6’s first-of-its-kind innovation is well-positioned to impact how we farm seaweed and its utilization across industries,” said Veilings and Novogratz. “It gets us much closer to realizing algae as a commercial scale aqua feed ingredient and as a direct source of protein for all.”

“Their SeaCombine makes sustainably farming the ocean a possibility, while capturing CO2 and transforming it into valuable products. The company’s approach impressed us from the start, and we’re eager to integrate them into our portfolio and begin to work together.”

Due to the nascent nature of the seaweed industry, most of its traditional production methods remain highly labor-intensive, and production has been largely confined to shallow, or calm areas of water  – all factors that have hindered it from scaling up in an economically viable way.

Indeed, since the company’s launch, its founding partners have been working to advance technologies and products to drive growth for the seaweed industry. Today, the company in headquartered in Bangalore with operations out of India and Indonesia, touching upon the entire supply chain from seaweed farming, to product development, to consumer retail.

“At Sea6 Energy, we are focussed on cultivating and processing tropical seaweed species which have the advantage of high growth rates, large scalability and year round availability of biomass,” said Shrikumar Suryanarayan, managing director and co-founder, Sea6 energy. “This coupled with the fact that seaweed cultivation is a very sustainable operation makes this biomass a versatile and ideal raw material that can be used for a variety of Industrial purposes to greatly reduce their carbon footprint.”

The advent of the SeaCombine, however, is a game-changer – reducing the labor required to harvest and seed seaweed, while enabling production to occur in the open ocean.

Sea6 Energy also has developed proprietary methods for stabilizing fresh seaweed for longer periods of time, and for processing the stored seaweed directly into a range of products – greatly expanding possible applications.

For example, Sea6 Energy explained that it has patented biostimulants and biodefense products benefiting plant health and for use in agricultural production; has developed an animal feed additive that can stimulate innate immunity pathways in both aquaculture and poultry applications; and has developed a process for the creation of an eco-friendly carrageenan.

Joining Aqua-Spark in this round was its co-investor, Singapore-based Silverstrand Capital, who together have committed capital that will be used by Sea6 Energy to finance additional SeaCombine systems for the increased supply of raw seaweed material, to expand the company processing capacity through the addition of new facilities for the production of its biostimulant, animal health, and plant-based carrageenan products through energy efficient and eco-friendly methods.

“We are delighted to be part of the Aqua-Spark portfolio of companies,” said Suryanarayan. “Aqua-Spark’s vision of sustainability is very well aligned with Sea6’s own vision.”

– Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.