A conversation with Sowmya Balendiran, co-founder and chief business officer at Sea6 Energy, about regenerative aquaculture, how to restore the oceans and use them more to reduce the pressure on land systems, get fossil fuel use down drastically, like in fertiliser, plastics, and in food of course.
Sowmya is one of the pioneers who helped create the first signs of a tropical seaweed industry. What do you do if you have to invent both sides of the business? How do you grow seaweed industrially at scale and price points that make sense? And how do you process seaweed into products that sell for an interesting enough margin?
Someone will soon mention seaweed. It sounds magical, some species grow super fast, you can harvest them year-round, they don’t need any inputs, don’t need land but sea, which we have a lot of, etc. So, why hasn’t seaweed taken over the world yet? What is needed to industrially farm tropical seaweed? Industrial might sound like what we don’t want, but in tropical seaweed, most work is done by hand, standing knee-deep or neck-deep in the water. We can agree that that won’t scale and get us to a seaweed industry that can replace large amounts of fossil fuels.
Sea6 Energy is a leader in the production and processing of tropical red seaweed.
LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION ON:
This episode is part of the Regenerative Aquaculture series, supported by The Nest, a family office dedicated to building a more resilient food system through supporting natural solutions and innovative technologies that change the way we produce food.
WHY SEAWEED, ESPECIALLY TROPICAL SEAWEED, IS SO INTERESTING FROM AN IMPACT PERSPECTIVE
Sowmya emphasises the benefits of seaweed farming, including providing a food source for fish and reducing environmental risks, with support from governmental and third-party agencies.
”We’re operating in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia; there’s been a history of seaweed cultivation for multiple decades. And these three countries are actually called the coral triangle, which also has a rich amount of coral life out there. And they’ve been farming for more than four decades today. And that’s your proof that seaweeds synergistically work with the ecosystem pretty well. The other advantage of the seaweeds that we work with is that they don’t have any air pockets, which means they can’t float and go anywhere. In case they get cut off, they do go to the bottom. And once you go below 10 or 15 metres, there is no sunlight. So, you eventually die. There is no way of you going and staying in another place and growing there.” Sowmya Balendiran
”We have this term that we use, which is called fish tax. Part of your seaweed is going to be eaten by the fish, but then you just call it the fish tax. And you’ll have your seaweed farmers coming up as we actually learn how to build a nice ecosystem. There are a lot of reports being made on it. We’ve done our own surveys, and we’ve also worked with third-party agencies to establish both the social and economic benefits and the environmental risks and benefits of what needs to be done. So that has been studied quite well. And mostly for us, if you’re using a species that has been grown and cultivated and has been in cultivation for a very, very long time, that takes away most of the risk to start with.” Sowmya Balendiran
WHAT IS OR WAS HOLDING BACK THE TROPICAL SEAWEED SPACE TO INDUSTRIALISE
Sowmya highlights the shift in awareness and technology, with companies now focusing on fixing missing pieces and increasing productivity.
”The biggest difference I see is that when we started in this case, let’s say 14 years ago and now, are two things. One is the amount of awareness. Technology coming into play and companies coming into play—both of them have changed drastically, right? […] But today we were just starting to talk about it, right? We have conferences, we have people, we have communities, and we have a lot of interested parties looking at how this can actually bring a lot of change and address climate change as well. And it’s not just people in communities; I think even the government is starting to look at it and rally around it as well. So, I think that’s a huge paradigm shift that has happened over the years. And companies like us and many other companies have also started fixing the biggest missing pieces and issues. So, what was an extremely labour-intensive, very, very, very low productivity? Now we can look at it as an industry that can have much higher productivity, very efficiently. Right. And that happens when you have the right tools and technologies coming into play. There has also been a lot of funding over a period of time that has evolved our products and markets. So, I see a lot of evolution, meaning, and changes in the last 15 years.” Sowmya Balendiran
”There’s a lot of technology that needs to be invented and made upstream, like how you grow the seaweed, so that you can talk about cultivating multiple hundreds and thousands of hectares on the sea. Because that technology was absolutely missing. We’ve done agriculture so successfully on land. Three-fourths of our world is ocean, and we have no idea how to grow anything on that so far. I mean, I can’t say no idea, but very limited area.”
– Sowmya Balendiran
WHAT MECHANISATION MEANS IN SEAWEED FARMING
Sowmya explains how Sea6 Energy’s Sea Combine technology enables offshore seaweed farming, including monitoring and processing.
”So, Sea Combine is our ocean platform, right? It’s like, let’s say, a barge on the ocean that houses multiple pieces of equipment that can be used in seeding, harvesting, and everything else. Now I can have a barge on the sea, on the land, or anywhere else that they want based on the farming conditions I’m doing. Sea Combine is a great piece of technology for us because it truly enabled us to see how offshore seaweed can be done, where you don’t need people standing and doing stuff, […] and how you can bring in those kinds of technologies and accessible areas for farming to happen. But there’s a lot more technology development that has happened—the amount of technology development that has grown into seeding and harvesting these farms. How do you transport across in that place? What is the processing technology that’s being used? How do you take the seaweeds and make them into final products? How do we do monitoring? Whether it is your drone monitoring, your weather monitoring, or your seaweed biology, that is an exorbitant amount of technology and information that wasn’t there. That did not exist. And all of this had to be created in- house.” Sowmya Balendiran
THE NEXT 3–5 YEARS ARE SO EXCITING
Sowmya predicts the seaweed industry will take off in the next 5 years with substantial investment.
”What I would like to tell entrepreneurs starting up in this area and investors starting to look at this area is that this is definitely not your tech area where you put in the money, and three years later, five years later, you’re getting a massive return. I think it is going to be a longer gestational period. So, get on it if you feel you’re ready to spend a few years—much longer than the initial three or five. For any entrepreneurs or investors, I keep saying that when you build an industry for the first time, you’ve got to be able to go all the way. I think today, it’s going to be much easier. And frankly, I think in the next five years, I see a lot of chains, substantial amount of work coming through in this particular phase. So, I think finally, we may be ready to be an industry that is ready to take off.” Sowmya Balendiran
OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED
Koen and Sowmya also talked about:
- Why it took 14 years to get to a 1 km2 seaweed farm
- Why you need to have a business model from the start that makes sense and to make sure you are not depending on a miracle
- Transitioning from fossil fuels to seaweed-based products
- Investing in seaweed farming, prioritising production, commercialisation, and research
LINKS:
LINKED INTERVIEWS:
- Georg Baunach – More than half of the fish you eat is farmed: basics, potential and risks of investing in aquaculture
- Regenerative Aquaculture series
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.