After successfully harvesting and delivering a shipment of sargassum from the Dominican Republic to Finland, the biorefining process can begin.
Read the first part of our story of how we harvested sargassum in the Dominican Republic with our partners here.
The first step in the biorefining process is called pre-treatment, where the seaweed is refined into particulate matter. It is an essential step in preparing the feedstock for further refining into our products.
The quality of Dominican sargassum proved to be excellent, which we were really happy about. We're really thankful to have found such great technology partners in the Dominican Republic with whom we can strengthen our industrial production chain. We built a reliable supply chain for sargassum and with a variety of different seaweed and algae, it fits well with our de-risking strategy for feedstock.
Brown seaweeds
At the moment, we are sourcing four different brown seaweed species in our process:
Sargassum – sourced from the Dominican Republic and Portugal
Farmed kelp – sourced from European Union waters
Farmed Fucus vesiculosus (bladderwrack) – sourced from Finland and the EU
Rugulopteryx okamurae – sourced from Portugal and Spain
We are focusing on local species.
We have also set up a quality standard for sourced sargassum. We are making the standard part of the local working methods in the supply chain together with our Dominican partners. Increasing local expertise will enable more investment in the local algae industry as well.