UK start-up Oceanium emerges as the victor of the Thai Union Innovation Challenge at this year’s Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit in Singapore. One of the world’s leading seafood producers, Thai Union had set the challenge to discover fresh ideas and solutions that will support its SeaChange 2030 Sustainability Strategy to reshape the seafood industry.
The Innovation Challenge – ‘Novel Ingredients and Applications from Ocean-Derived Ingredients’ – attracted entries from over 60 agri-food start-ups around the world. After a rigorous selection process, two finalists Ingrediome, and Oceanium had the opportunity to showcase their groundbreaking solutions on stage in Singapore, to the Thai Union judges and a global summit audience of over 1,000 global agri-food stakeholders.
UK based Oceanium presented its highly sophisticated biorefinery process which extracts maximum value from sustainably farmed seaweed to produce plant-based food ingredients and high-purity bioactives for health and wellness.
Israeli start-up Ingrediome employs photosynthetic fermentation and maps the culinary function of sea-food proteins to produce recombinant animal proteins that are carbon negative, low in capex and require minimal workforce.
As winner of the Innovation Challenge, Oceanium will now benefit from access to Thai Union’s Global Innovation Team for technical expertise, regulatory assistance, and formulation development to make a positive impact in the realm of diet and nutrition.
“We are excited to begin working with Oceanium as their seaweed biorefinery process provides multiple products that we can begin testing withing Thai Union. Oceanium fits in well with our SeaChange 2030 strategy by providing opportunities to local seaweed growers, and nutritious solutions that leverage the wholesomeness of the ocean,” said Chris Aurand, Open Innovation Lead at Thai Union.
Reacting to the win, Karen Scofield Seal, CEO and Co-Founder of Oceanium said: “It is a great honour to win the Thai Union Innovation Challenge. We’re on a journey to provide efficacious, functional seaweed ingredients with excellent traceability and provenance using sustainably sourced seaweed, whilst contributing to people health and ocean health. This award and meaningful partnership with Thai Union will help propel us forward at a pivotal moment as we bring our products to market.”
Commenting on the initiative with Thai Union, Sophie Brady at Rethink Events, organiser of the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit said: “It’s been such a pleasure work with Thai Union whose vision aligns closely to the goals of the summit, and to see the response from the start-up community to this fantastic opportunity. Congratulations to the winner, we look forward to their developments in the years to come.”
