Can American farmed seaweed finally find its market? Sam Garwin, GreenWave

Welcome to the podcast where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I am your host, Abigail Carroll.

What is going on with American farmed seaweed? That is the question we are asking this week.

We’ve heard a lot about it. For some time, everyone in the blue economy was touting its health benefits and umami flavour. Specialty seaweed food startups were getting on grocery store shelves nation-wide - and that is no small feat. It certainly is a good crop to farm as well. It's a winter crop that matures in a matter of month with no fresh water and light maintenance. (At least compared to oysters!) .

But then these seaweed food companies started to shutter. If you remember Courtney Boyd Rey was on the podcast -- she told us the sad story about AKUA’s struggles. And last fall we heard from a turnaround specialist trying revive Maine’s celebrated Atlantic Sea Farms. Most recently they succumbed, as did another known seaweed food startup.

So what happened and is there still a market for the seaweed we’re now cultivating along our coast? 

Sam Garwin from GREENWAVE is here to say she’s still an optimist. She has a hunch about what went wrong and is bullish about where the market can get it right. 

Transcript

Abigail 0:01

Welcome to the podcast where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I am your host, Abigail Carroll. What is going on with American Farm Seaweed? That is the question for this week. We've heard a lot about it. For some time. Everybody in the blue economy was touting its health benefits and its umami flavor, specialty seaweed, food startups. Were getting on grocery store shelves in stores nationwide, and that is no small feat. It certainly is a good crop to farm as well. It's a winter crop that matures in a matter of months with no fresh water input and light maintenance. At least compared to oysters. But then these seaweed food companies started to shutter. If you remember Courtney Boyd. Ray was on the podcast. She told the sad story about Akua struggles. And last fall. We heard from a turnaround specialist trying to revive Maine celebrated Atlantic Sea Farms. Most recently they shuttered too, as did another seaweed food startup. So what happened? And is there still a market for seaweed now that we're cultivating along our coasts? Sam Garland from GreenWave is here to say that she is still an optimist. She is a hunch about what went wrong and is bullish about where the market can finally get it right. welcome to the podcast, Sam.

Sam 1:45

Thank you so much, Abigail.

Abigail 1:47

I am delighted to have you here. The kelp market is a bit in a period of change right now and I'd love to have you help us, break down what's going on

Sam 1:57

yeah, absolutely. We are at a really exciting time for the kelp industry. I would say that there has been a first. Wave of kelp based companies see companies that really, that, that exist solely to bring kelp products to market. And those have come and a lot of them have gone. And I think that, that indicates that we are at a different stage in the market. We sometimes talk about at GreenWave, we've shared in some presentations recently this Gartner hype curve, which is. Not usually used to describe agricultural sectors. It's usually used to talk about like high tech industries, but it's this idea that sort of, when a new industry starts up, there's a lot of speculative interest in it, and there could be a lot of money poured into trying to get rich quick basically. Or trying to build out the most I, going all in on a few ideas and a few different models, and sometimes those work out, but a lot of times they don't. And as those fall fall away. What we see is there is actually a slower steadier, sometimes less sexy building of businesses that have been there the whole time, but haven't been taking quite the same meteoric or flashy approach to their growth. And so those have been there, they've been growing the whole time, and those might have a better chance of long-term success because they've been building in ways that are a little bit more sustainable from a financial structure and also from a just logistical and business operations perspective. And so I do think that we are starting to see those businesses the second wave of businesses emerge and, and gain strength, although it is obviously a challenging, still a challenging time to to raise money regardless of how well those businesses are doing.

Abigail 3:47

We're talking about seaweed as though it's new, but it's actually to your point. It's been around for a long time. Seaweed that is off in the Gulf of Maine that has been used forever for thickening is a thickening agent

Sam 4:03

Yes, seaweed derived ingredients have been used for a long time from the Wild Harvest there's a lot of precedent for these ingredients, although a lot of people don't even realize that they are seaweed derived. So I think the trick for where the industry is now is, we are really interested in, at GreenWave, our focus has shifted from these ID from creating seaweed centric companies that exist only to work in seaweed to thinking about what sectors. Have the expertise already. They're not seaweed companies, they're just companies. But how do we show the value of kelp regeneratively, farmed kelp specifically to existing industries, and then support them in doing what they know how to do best to create seaweed derived ingredients to formulate consumer facing end products, whether that's beauty products or food products, or. Plastic alternatives or soil amendments, make those products with seaweed. But you don't need to be a seaweed company. You don't need to be like a kelp company in order to do that. You just have to be a business-minded person who sees that there's a huge opportunity in. A, an ingredient in a food, a feedstock, a crop that is completely regeneratively farmed. No water, no fresh water, no arable land, no nitrogen fertilizer, and that can be predictably farmed as opposed to relying on this extractive wild harvest methods that have been more of the past. So that's the new angle that we're taking and Car Carine and Yes, has been around forever. GreenWave is really focused on trying to make sure that farmers have a good livelihood. And so when you're there, it's a hard comparison to it's hard if you start from the point of looking at wild harvest supply chains because there's no farmer in that one, you're, there's just a business that gets a permit to take from the ocean. And so when you're talking about a farmed. Source of seaweed, the farmer is adding value in that they are providing that predictability that reliable, scalable source of input for a business. But that also means that they need to have, to get some value out of that value chain. And so the lower value commodity ingredients that have been derived from Wild Harvest aren't necessarily the direction we're heading. We're looking for more high value ingredients, high value products that can support farmers' livelihoods in the process.

Abigail 6:26

So what are some examples of those high value products or, and functionality? I like this approach of really looking at the functionality of seaweed. What is it, what are the elements that make it interesting to different sectors?

Sam 6:42

Yeah, absolutely.

Abigail 6:43

approach.

Sam 6:45

Yeah. So one area where GreenWave is really focused right now is the personal care and beauty space. Seaweed has an immense number of compounds in it, kelp in, kelp in particular that that have really evolved from. The fact that, seaweed is in this really intense environment in the ocean, right? It's being bashed around by waves constantly. It's in salt, it's under the sun. There's all kinds of critters that are trying to eat it constantly. And so it's, it has developed. Mechanisms, chemical and biological mechanisms to keep it hydrated, to keep it, re to allow it to regenerate, to protect it from the sun. And these same characteristics that are, that exist just to like. kelp stay alive and the ocean transfer really well over to beauty products and products that are designed to protect and nourish your skin. We have been working with a company called Macro Oceans which is a seaweed centric company, but not in the, not in a consumer facing way. So Macro Oceans is a bio-refinery. They're based in Sacramento and they take, wet kelp and they refine it. They extract out various high value components and and then standardize those components into products for various markets. So they have a product that is called Big Kelp Hydration. It is hydrating. Ingredients intended for personal care products. We know that it takes, so they source the kelp for that product from farmers that GreenWave works with. In Kodiak, Alaska, the takes three kilograms of Alaskan grown sugar kelp to get one kilogram of this product. There's some other components of it as well. It's not purely kelp, but. That's the ratio there. And then that ingredient can then be sold and be used into, in, in products like sunscreens, body oils, hair products color cosmetics. And we are the structure for that we're working on right now is called the kelp innovation CoLab. So we're actually running a, like a. An innovation program for beauty brands to try working with this kelp based ingredient. 'cause it is a totally brand new thing. So we understand that there's risk involved and so we are providing some funding and also technical assistance and support on developing messaging around why kelp is the perfect ingredient for people to start incorporating into their. Beauty and skincare routines and here in North America, I think it's been a trend in, in Asian markets for a long time, but similar to the food

Abigail 9:19

La Mer

Sam 9:20

space. Yeah. True. La Mer.

Abigail 9:22

At at $125 an ounce. I think

Sam 9:25

talk about high value that you can see the values there.

Abigail 9:27

For sure. I wanna be a kelp farmer selling to La Mer. So how does this innovation colabs work? Who's coming and how is that a sort of classic accelerated program model?

Sam 9:42

great question. No, it is not a classic accelerator program. There are a few differences between CoLab and a classic accelerator. The first is that we are not looking for startups. We specifically recruited companies that are established. They're not. Huge. We're not talking we're not talking panty provi, we're talking emerging brands that, but that are have a retail presence already. Either physically in a retail store like Sephora or Credo or one of those, or direct to consumer on their own websites. We were looking for companies that already had media followings that they could help us tell the story of kelp. And most importantly, we wanted these companies to have capacity to bring products to market within 12 to 18 months of the program end. So this is not about pitching ideas. This is about, we have a kelp based ingredient. We want you to put it in an actual formulation and bring it to market, and we're gonna provide you funding to, to do that. So that, those are some of the ways in which it's, it's very different from an accelerator. I would say it's similar in that we are providing this sort of wraparound support. So in addition to the funding and the formulation scopes of work that we're executing on, we are having these. Cohort meetings. A few of them are virtual and then we actually do have one coming up in person. We're taking all nine brands to Alaska with us to Juno, Alaska, to tour kelp farm, and to talk about the supply chain more, more in depth. But the, in the cohort meetings, we're really digging into important topics that all of these brands are facing. So it's a pre-competitive space. Some of them are direct competitors, but they're all. Really collaborating on the importance of bringing this new ingredient to the forefront of beauty and to figuring out how to talk about it and how to get everyday consumers interested in regenerative leaf farms ingredients.

Abigail 11:33

So why if I'm a skincare company, why would I wanna use this ingredient? What functionality? Okay, it's a hydrating, there are other hydrating ingredients. Why make this choice?

Sam 11:47

Yeah. The, it's meant to compliment existing, hydrating ingredients like hyaluronic acid, like aloe, that sort of thing. It delivers slightly different hydrating properties. Like it works in a slightly different way. And it also has some additional benefits that we think that there are additional benefits that we are actually validating again, as part of this CoLab. So we're gonna be doing some research to look into whether we can get an additional claim around, for example, redness reduction or that, something like that. Kelp is known, widely known in all kinds of other contexts. Not necessarily skin, but in, the gut. It is known to do, to be anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, all of these things. That's part of what's interesting about bringing a product like kelp to market. You can have all the scientific papers. You want until you've done a clinical trial with humans and you can't take and put on your package, Hey, people saw a 80% reduction in redness over however many days. That is a very specific type of study that you have to pay for. And so there is, that's one of those gaps that isn't really talked about in terms of being able to go from having a great ingredient to market success is like.

Abigail 12:59

Yeah.

Sam 13:00

There are things that are needed that cost money, that require, regulatory approval, all of these very unsexy, uninteresting things that are just like absolutely critical to taking something to market that still needs to be done. But I will say that the story and the regenerative aspect of kelp is really important. All of these, not just beauty brands, but food brands are really getting a lot of pressure from consumers too. Become clean label. People don't want products that are bad for them, that have toxic ingredients for, from a personal level who nobody wants to put that on their skin. But then, every time a company is sourcing a synthetic or a toxic ingredient, there is a supply chain there that is creating that and creating that toxicity, putting out waste. And I do think that consumers, particularly the younger generations have a really good understanding that how they spend their money matters and that they can have an impact on companies by choosing to purchase clean label products only.

Abigail 13:56

So do you think people are attracted to kelp now? Is it catching on? It feels like in the food sector it, it went bananas and everybody was eating kelp, and then it seems like everybody was willing to try it. These kelp companies got wild amount of stores, but then it seems like repeat purchases was a problem. And many of them failed. Akua failed. They were on our podcast. Actually, the turnaround guy from Atlantic Sea Farms was on our podcast last fall. And then they just didn't make it. And Sea Monsters is another one that just foul. Are we having a better market response? I think people were eager, they just weren't, they just weren't addicted to the products. Is there a better response or a different response in the skincare industry? I.

Sam 14:45

Yeah, there absolutely is. As you. Pointed out with La Mer and as I was putting out with Asian skincare brands seaweed is already a well established ingredient. This is just a different form, and it's better because it's regeneratively farmed instead of wild harvest, right? So I do think that there is a more established. Acceptance of kelp as an ingredient in beauty. And and honestly, the brand, the brands haven't launched to their products yet, so it remains to be seen. But I do think that they, the fact that these nine brands have signed on to do this is a really, great signal to the industry that it, this is, this could be a, an unlock for kelp. These are not unknown brands. You can go to our website, kelp colab.com to see the names of the brands. But this is true Botanicals. This is Sansi, this is Crave Beauty. These are brands that know what they're doing and have started trends and been on the forefront of beauty before. So we're pretty confident that we're gonna be seeing a lot more kelp. In beauty going forward? On the food side we are thinking, GreenWave is thinking very much, how would we do this? How would we replicate this in the food space? And I think that one of the things that all of these food brands that have not made it have in common is that kelp was really the hero ingredient and a significant component of the product by weight. And I understand why they did that. They were trying, these are mission-based companies that were really trying to. Use a lot of kelp because the more kelp they used, the better it was for farmers. And that's great. And in order for any product, in any industry to be successful, you need to know what are the like. deal breakers for the consumers in this industry, for beauty products, it's that the product has to work. If your product doesn't work functionally, nobody's gonna repeat buy if they don't see the redness reduction or the hydration or whatever, like you're gonna get them once and the never again, from the food perspective, it has to taste good. Just has to, it just, it has to be delicious. And I think that no, as much as. US environment, we environmentalists really want it to be. So nobody's gonna just buy on mission alone. They, it just has to taste good. And the reality is that the American palate is not there yet when it comes to kelp. And so I think that we, our, we'll see another generation of kelp. Based or kelp infused food products, but there's gonna be a lot less kelp. It's gonna be used more as a flavoring or a seasoning or a functional component. So for example, we have been really looking into what does kelp have that food companies need. So not like aspirationally do they want it, but like they have a problem that they need solved. And so one of these examples is

Abigail 17:28

umami.

Sam 17:29

salt reduction. Salt reduction is a big deal. A lot of brands are trying to reduce the amount of sodium in their products. Kelp is the biggest source of natural glutamate which delivers yes, that umami flavor. So if we could create a kelp derived ingredient that is clean label, that helps companies reduce the amount of sodium in their product, that could be a big win. Another one is fiber. So probiotics, all the rage, but now people are realizing you can have your probiotic bacteria, but you need to feed them with the prebiotic fiber. And so prebiotic fiber is a huge thing right now. Kelps got a lot of that. Kelps got amazing prebiotic fiber. It's great for your gut. So could there be a kelp based prebiotic fiber that could replace something like chicory fiber, which has been known to actually cause more gut issues, or something like acacia fiber, which is sourced only from a tree in Sudan. There's, there, there are some opportunities there that are not as. You know that you might not end up with kelp on the label at all, or if it is on the label, it might be small. But I think that it has a better fit for where the American palette and interest is right now.

Abigail 18:37

It's also about what kind of seaweed we have. And we have kelp, we have dosa that some people love. They say if you fry it up it tastes like bacon. But kelp is definitely an acquired taste. I in my opinion. Although I have seen it used very successfully by ocean's balance as seasoning. Those were really really great seasonings. And I think that's what you're getting at. What are these, like core functionalities rather than trying to turn it into a hamburger or turn it into something that it's not, but calling it kelp. Let's really look at the seaweed and see what the what spring forward

Sam 19:10

Yeah, exactly.

Abigail 19:12

So tell me a little bit about kind of cost wise. You've gotta find these like value added. Opportunities because it's gotta be more expensive, right? Than either bringing in Asian, seaweed, which is like 90% of the seaweed in the world, or or just, dealing from plundering the ocean. So how can we get, products, makers of products, and then consumers to pay that extra bit which I presume is it costs more to farm than to wild harvest. How can we get them to pay a little bit more in order to enhance and not hurt the ocean's ecosystem?

Sam 19:58

So farmed seaweed right now costs more than wild harvested seaweed. The way we get that price down over time is a there are a few different levers we have to pull. Number one, downstream Businesses who are, that are making these ingredients or end products need to make commitments to farmers. The reason I start with that is that, people often say, oh, it's on the farmers to scale, it's on the farmers to get bigger, to get more efficient, to get, better processing equipment and all of that. There is absolutely no way a farmer can do that without having a known buyer in mind for a known quantity, because they cannot get financing. They just can't, they can't take the risk of making that level of investment without knowing that there is money coming on the other side of that. So if, I really put a challenge out there for any companies that are looking to innovate with kelp. It's on you to make an investment, to make a commitment that if you make this, I will buy it. And once, once farmers have that. Then yes, they can grow, they can collaborate with other farmers in their region to aggregate supply and to work with either, seafood processors to. To utilize equipment that is otherwise, sitting there in the off season or to purchase their own equipment and gain efficiencies that way, that will bring down the cost. The farming of kelp itself is actually not that expensive an endeavor. You have your seed inputs, which is important which is a cost, you have your initial startup costs of getting your permit and your gear and all that. As we've said, there's no, there's very little. You're not applying anything throughout the season, it's just sitting there in the water. The costs all have to do with the harvesting and the processing and the efficiencies of that. And those are solvable problems. That's just equipment. If we had, if the industry had enough of a reliable offtaker. We'd get John Deere in there. They would figure out how to harvest kelp real fast and real efficiency efficiently, and the cost would come down dramatically. End.

Abigail 22:12

Yeah, absolutely. So who are the biggest off takers today? 'cause. We're still seaweed farming despite some setbacks with some companies going under, who is buying this right now today? Other than your skincare, you're nine skincare companies, what are the, some of the other areas that are moving?

Sam 22:33

yeah. The biggest areas now are biostimulants, which are soil amendments that are the other side of. K. The other side of, they're not nitrogen based fertilizers. They are instead the microbiome and the micronutrients that support the plant growth. So there's several companies that are buying for biostimulants. There are companies that are still buying for food, albeit in a different. Different ways we've already discussed beauty products. It, it's many more than those nine brands. The nine brands are the ones who are in our accelerator, but macro oceans as a whole book of sales and customers outside of that, that, that are buying kelp based ingredients. So you know that those are still, those are the three really big areas. They are looking, there are several, I think I heard someone say 30, this conference I was at last week, the Alaska Mariculture Conference. 30 companies are worldwide that are looking at seaweed based plastic alternatives. A lot of those are not they're certainly not. Fully kelp or regeneratively, farmed seaweeds, but they are looking at incorporating them as a component in addition to wild harvest, which is, fine and good. Yeah, I would say those are the major areas there.

Abigail 23:42

So how did you find your way into seaweed?

Sam 23:45

Oh, I had been working in the regenerative food space more broadly for I think about 10 years before I came to GreenWave. So I, my experience is building businesses that are you might say they are alternative value chains. So I started off in cocoa creating direct trade organic. Cocoa beans supply chains for bean to bar chocolate makers. There obviously is a huge commodity market out there for cocoa beans, but those beans are grown in ways that are bad for people, bad for the environment and don't produce a very high quality product. Trying to do the exact opposite that, of that, creating a supply chain that was good for people, good for the environment, and created an amazing end product. And that's been the theme of my. Work in food systems is giving people alternatives that that are more in line with their values and allow people to really contribute to the world they wanna see through just making different decisions at the grocery store.

Abigail 24:43

Okay. You've got nine participants in your program right now. What's the timeline? When can consumers expect to start benefiting from these seaweed infused products?

Sam 24:57

I would expect to see some of them launching by the end of this year in time for the holiday season. Others may take a bit longer for that, but yeah, things are going well. So 2026 should be the year.

Abigail 25:11

That's super exciting. Sam, I'm so glad you've been on today and I'm gonna end this podcast with one question that I ask everybody in the podcast. Are you optimistic about the health of the planet at this point?

Sam 25:25

Oh boy. What a question. In 2026.

Abigail 25:29

I didn't ask about the mental health. I asked about the physical health.

Sam 25:35

Oh, am I optimistic? I I'll say this, I will say that I think that we as humans have all the tools we need to. Create a healthy planet to, to maintain a healthy planet, to bring the planet back into balance. I don't think we need any new technology. I don't think we need I, yeah. We, everything we need is right here. I think my concern or my where I have a lack of optimism or where I am, where I think we need to work is on having the willingness to make decisions based on things other than purely profit. I think that the ways that the regenerative methods that we have and that we know work are not gonna make anyone rich, and so we collectively need to decide that it's more important to us to, to just. Fix the planet than it is for anyone to, to make a lot of money off of it. And I think if as soon as we decide that it will be very, it will happen very quickly and it'll happen very easily because again we don't need to innovate anymore. We've got everything.

Abigail 26:53

Wow. Thank you. I appreciate that take on it. Thank you so much for coming to the podcast today, and I wish you. And your nine brands. And I hope to see it all in the market this fall.

Sam 27:05

Awesome. Thank you so much, Abigail. This has been fun.