Aqua-Spark invested in Sea6 Energy, a vertically integrated seaweed producer, processor and developer headquartered in India with a subsidiary in Indonesia. The company has developed the proprietary SeaCombine, a fully mechanized cultivation system that can simultaneously harvest and replant seaweed in deep ocean waters, enabling cost-competitive production at scale. Additionally, Sea6 has developed proprietary processing technologies to convert fresh seaweed into novel products for agriculture, animal health, food ingredients, bioplastics and renewable chemicals.
Aqua-Spark is the lead investor in Sea6’s $9M Series B round, alongside co-investor, the Singapore-based Silverstrand Capital. The funds will contribute towards the financing of additional SeaCombine systems to increase the supply of seaweed raw material and expanding Sea6’s processing capacity with additional production facilities to produce Sea6’s agricultural biostimulant products, animal health products as well as a carrageenan plant based on an energy-efficient and eco-friendly process.
Mike Velings and Amy Novogratz, co-founders of Aqua-Spark, said that “investing in seaweed production has been a priority for us since we launched in 2015. We expect it to play a big part in the future of aquaculture, but, until now, we didn't have an operation that was both economically viable and able to produce at scale. Sea6's first-of-its-kind innovation is well-positioned to impact how we farm seaweed and its utilization across industries. It gets us much closer to realizing algae as a commercial scale aquafeed ingredient and as a direct source of protein for all. Their SeaCombine makes sustainably farming the ocean a possibility while capturing CO2 and transforming it into valuable products. The company's approach impressed us from the start, and we're eager to integrate them into our portfolio and begin to work together.”
Shrikumar Suryanarayan, managing director and co-founder of Sea6 Energy, said, “we are delighted to be part of the AquaSpark portfolio of companies. AquaSpark's vision of sustainability is very well aligned with Sea6's own vision. At Sea6 Energy, we are focused on cultivating and processing tropical seaweed species which have the advantage of high growth rates, large scalability and year-round availability of biomass. This coupled with the fact that seaweed cultivation is a very sustainable operation makes this biomass a versatile and ideal raw material that can be used for a variety of industrial purposes to greatly reduce their carbon footprint.”
Sea6 has patented biostimulants and biodefense products for agriculture and plant health, an animal feed additive product that can stimulate innate immunity pathways in both aquaculture and poultry applications, additionally, developed a process for eco-friendly carrageenan.
