Seaweed is making waves in nutrition-rich NPDs and speaks with industry professionals about the rising tide for its use as a sustainable and healthy ingredient. Seaweed, with its many varieties is tipped to become the next super green “superfood”, and this staying true to its title, seaweed is finding new product applications in Western markets due to its wide ranging health benefits.

Although seaweed cultivation has been around for decades, the challenges for today’s burgeoning industry is to keep pace with demand for the super speeding growing and nutrient-rich algae that is being included in new product innovations across the food, supplement and animal feed segments.

FoodIngredientsFirst examines the surge of seaweed as an ingredient - often used for innovative flavoring or as a salt substitute amongst a myriad of other things - and speaks with industry professionals making waves in the sector.

Innova Market Insights has reported a +10% increase in global supplements launches containing seaweed ingredients (2015 vs. 2014). Global product launch activity containing seaweed ingredients has risen consistently since 2011, with 4% growth in launches reported between 2014 and 2015.

Seaweed’s global versatility is a major plus, with very different market categories leading in different regions around the world: North America (sports powders), West Europe (gummies/jellies), Latin America (savory biscuits/crackers), Australasia (sports powders), Asia (savory/salty snacks) and Middle East (gummies/jellies).

Seamore Food offers healthy seaweed alternatives to consumer favorites like pasta and bacon; the brainchild of company founder, Willem Sodderland, who came up with the idea when mistaking seaweed for pasta during a vacation. Today the brand is on sale across Europe with plans for global expansion.

Within the range are I Sea Bacon, a 100% wild, organic seaweed that turns into (green) bacon when you fry it. This wild seaweed is hand-picked from rocks in France, is gluten free, vegan, organic, low-carb and sustainable. It can be used in recipes, like salad and pasta dishes, to give a smoky, salty kick. I Sea Pasta looks like tagliatelle but is 100% wild, handpicked seaweed from Connemara, Ireland.

Sustainability and transparency is important to Seamore and the brand’s design is modern, fresh and on point naming seaweed as a “superfood”.

Seagreens Ltd is a British company whose founding idea was to make it easy for anyone to include at least a gram a day of the most nutritious seaweed in their daily diet. Seagreens is certified Organic by the Soil Association in Britain and Probio in Norway and now has several production partnerships in the Outer Hebrides, Iceland, Ireland and Norway, further developing quality and the range of species and applications and world markets.

Speaking with FoodIngredientsFirst, Seagreens’ founder Simon Ranger explains the company’s rise - and what to expect in the seaweed space.

“based on Seagreens’ own applied nutrition research and other peer-reviewed international studies over the past two decades, we can expect ingredient applications which for functional reasons are increasingly replacing less desirable ingredients like salt, fats and sugars, providing new organoleptic interest such as ‘mouthfeel’, and a range of delicious ‘umami’ flavors which our more innovative chefs and food producers are just beginning to incorporate into the most everyday foods,” he tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

“But along with these, particularly as seaweed becomes more widely used as an ingredient, comes its more esoteric potential - as a mineral rich, nutrient dense, low calorie whole food - to fill serious nutrient gaps in the average weekly shopping basket, and address public health concerns like obesity, and cardiovascular, neural and degenerative diseases.”

“Seaweed’s special umami flavor (from its natural glutamate) increases salivation and therefore taste. In the elderly, umami has been shown to significantly improve appetite, weight gain and general health, and its special polysaccharides have been shown to improve digestion,” explains Ranger.

Algaia recently bolstered its growth in specialty marine ingredients by completing the acquisition of Cargill’s Alginate business and manufacturing plant, further strengthening its portfolio following another acquisition of Alganact SA. The start-up company specializes in seaweed biomass valorization.

According to CEO of Algaia, Fabrice Bohin, sustainability is a key driver pushing the seaweed products space. “The main driver for the increasing interest towards seaweeds is linked to consumer pressure for natural products with a healthy nutritional profile but also the mainstream trend towards sustainability. Seaweed is one of the most sustainable raw materials as it does consume CO2 when growing and does not require any irrigation water, cultivation land, pesticides or fertilizers to grow. In addition, there are a lot of possibilities to naturally cultivate seaweed to expand the resource if needed without impacting the planet,” Bohin tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

According to Bohin, today only around 20% of seaweed biomass when processed is currently being used, mostly as texturizing agents like carrageenans and alginates.

“With a high fiber content and various antioxidant, antimicrobial and immunostimulating capacities, seaweed is a natural resource that has a huge potential to be exploited in the health and nutrition market,” he explains.

“Algaia is gearing up to become a major player in innovative specialty seaweed extracts. Our R&D center, in partnership with various universities and institutes, has been working to develop innovative extraction processes that will enable us to introduce new solutions for the food industry by 2018.”

Right now Algaia offers a large range of brown and red seaweed based extracts such as alginates and Carrageenans, backed up by developing specific customized solution and decades of manufacturing experience dealing with very low and very high viscosity.

“In parallel, we develop with partners some specialty seaweed extracts for various health and personal care applications,” adds Bohin. “Seaweeds or microalgae are considered by many as an essential raw material that can play an important role in human health and nutrition in the future. Already known for decades as major texturizing or gelling agents, seaweeds are now expanding into the specialty ingredient market as they can be excellent source of nutrients and are widely used as fat replacers or alternatives to animal based ingredients.”
 
Another company looking at microalgae is flavor and natural ingredients company Frutarom, wher its president natural product solutions, Yoni Glickman, has been involved with microalgae for many years.

“I think that it is a fantastic platform moving forward for 2017. Being able to deliver active nutrients in a very effective manner but which is also environmentally friendly is a very appealing and significant trend,” he says.

Currently, Frutarom is working on several new strains of microalgae and mainly supplying ingredients to support the growth of natural products in the cosmetic ingredients markets. “An important focus for us is pigments which are coming from algae sources,” Glickman states. “There are multiple ingredients which can be derived from algae sources; we have our own algae technology and ability from this area. The idea is that they are integrated from the algae farms to the finished product formulations.”

“Everything that can be natural could be natural,” he says. “At Frutarom that is what we are working on achieving in our daily work – to replac synthetic flavors, synthetic antioxidant, synthetic colors and this is critical to both the food industry and to our consumers.”

So we know seaweed is surging forward, both as a whole food and ingredient and substitute, but what are some of the challenges associated with producing it and how are manufacturers and growers overcoming them?

“Producing seaweed extracts requires tremendous expertise and manufacturing skills. The main challenges are to be able to produce high quality seaweed extracts sustainably and in sufficient quantities. Therefore, our control over sourcing and being located next to fresh biomass is a key element of differentiation and a guarantee for high quality and traceability,” according to Bohin.

“This is precisely wher Algaia can make a difference as we do have decades of expertise in-house and we just invested 2 million euros in our facility in Britanny, France, to allow us to grow even further while increasing production standards. Our R&D findings in terms of process are also helping to constantly innovate towards more sustainability.”

For Ranger at Seagreens the main challenge is all about trying to keep it natural from an environment “about an uncontrollable as you can get.”

“More controlled environments will come with seaweed cultivation, but in my opinion, cultivation will only come when the wild harvesting we are involved in today, has established a consistent market and pricing, which are both at an early, and therefore volatile, stage. That is, if you are going to build a farm, you have to have some stable data - basic economics. And taking a wild product into mainstream markets - which it has to find if it going to really succeed - is very challenging.”

“Many species are in limbo as potential novel foods, while for most there is very little compositional analysis, and even if it is okay today, will it be once you have put it into a food product? We have overcome most of the hurdles now, because we have years of track record, but most of all because we have focused - obsessively, on just a few species, which we know more about than most people know about any of the meat and vegetables they eat every day,” concludes Ranger.