SeaStock: global recognition to boost scale-up
Biotech company SeaStock – the first Western Australian company that joined FutureFeed’s mission to reduce livestock methane emissions with Asparagopsis seaweed – has received global recognition after just two years in operation.
The company recently took out the Louis Dreyfus Corporation Climate Resilience Prize in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was one of more than 1200 startups from across the globe selected to take part in the 2023 accelerator program and the only Australian company to be selected as a finalist.
The Fremantle-based business was named as LDC Climate Resilience Prize winner because of its technology-based approach and potential to deliver rapid impact by cutting emissions from the world’s dairy and beef herds.
In addition to the LDC Climate Resilience Prize win, SeaStock has achieved many milestones since commencing operations in late 2021:
In June 2022, SeaStock filed a patent covering a method to cultivate and replicate the reproductive lifecycle stages of Asparagopsis seaweed.
The company entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in September 2022 with the Geraldton Fishermen’s Cooperative (western rock lobster processors) to repurpose receival depots for land-based cultivation of Asparagopsis.
In November 2022, the company filed a patent on a method it developed called dual extraction, which extracts the natural compounds from within the seaweed in a liquid phase separation process.
In July 2023, a hatchery and laboratory were established in Fremantle allowing the business to produce and extract various commercially valuable products from seaweed grown in a controlled environment.
To date, SeaStock has achieved a AUD$1.8 million capital raise.
SeaStock co-founder Tom Puddy said over the next three years the focus for the business would be on raising strategic capital and developing a large-scale production facility. In 2024 feasibility work on the facility will take place, with construction to occur in 2025 and commencement of commercial production in late 2025 / early 2026.
There are also plans to execute a global IP licensing strategy and eventually expand SeaStock’s customer base and operations globally.
“We are also entering another exciting phase of research and development which is more about purification, stability, value adding, and the optimising of the extraction methods. So we're doing that in partnership with a number of universities,” Mr. Puddy said.
By 2034, the company hopes to reach the targets of having mitigated 80 million tonnes of CO2e and achieved 30 million cattle on feed per day.
“Winning the LDC Climate Resilience Award was instant global recognition and validation that our innovative approach to seaweed cultivation and processing is commercially scalable and can have a direct impact on reducing methane emissions from livestock,” Mr. Puddy said.
“I couldn’t be prouder of our team and the industry partners that we have worked closely with to achieve this. The most important thing for me is creating a legacy that will have a global impact for future generations.”
Since the win, Mr. Puddy has been having business development conversations with several large brands in the food supply industry with global footprints.
“We have been judged by some of Europe’s largest commercial corporations that are looking for immediate solutions to reducing the impact of their supply chains. We now need support and investment to capitalise on this level of global recognition to be able to scale commercially in a fairly rapid timeframe,” he said.
“The interest in our industry is growing exponentially year on year and we are at the forefront in terms of the science behind cultivating and extracting high value compounds from seaweed and commercialising the supply of those products to end users globally.”
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