10179275Driving resource efficiency and value uplift through co-production of fucoidan and biostimulant using lactate-stabilised cultivated seaweedClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKWith its extensive nutrient-rich coastline and world-leading expertise in industrial biotechnology innovation, marine science, and aquaculture, the UK has the potential to lead the western world in the development of a sustainable seaweed farming industry. Sustainably farmed seaweed can be processed using innovative cascading biorefinery processes, producing multiple high-value products for nutraceutical, cosmetic, biomaterial and agricultural applications. However, scaling of seaweed biorefinery processing and the attendant supply of biomass from UK-cultivated sources faces numerous challenges. Existing seaweed biorefiners have struggled to find markets for their products due to high input costs for seaweed biomass and a lack of consistent supply at commercially meaningful volumes. Biorefinery of multiple products to sell into very different markets creates significant market entry challenges for resource-constrained start-ups. The current, failing industry paradigm supposes that seaweed farming companies sell a dried and milled raw material at minimal or negative margins to a biorefinery company, which then extracts various products and sells them into their different markets and effectively capturing much of the value in the supply chain. As such, most of the private investment in the UK seaweed value chain to date has gone to processing and product development companies, neglecting the development of scalable and consistent production of seaweed biomass needed to operate processing factories and produce commercially/industrially relevant volumes of seaweed-based products. KALY is a Skye-based kelp farming and primary processing start-up, with a licensed 400 wet-tonne seaweed farm in Loch Bay and options for a further 3,000 wet-tonnes, harvesting 0.15 wet-tonnes in pilot-scale trials in May 2024, with an additional 25 wet tonnes seeded and planned for May 2026 harvest. With public funding through Resource efficiency for resilience and sustainability FS, KALY will validate both the quality and quantity of the fucoidan in chemically-stabilised UK-cultivated seaweed and the viability of a subsequent biostimulant extraction using well-defined processes in a novel configuration, thereby improving the efficiency of the seaweed biomass by utilising multiple valuable components and significantly improving the commercial value of the raw material by capturing further processing value uplift from co-production. This is a timely approach to stimulate the development of the upstream farmed seaweed supply chain and resolve the lingering industry "chicken-and-egg" dilemmas, thereby unlocking the entirety of the potential in the downstream for innovative, more sustainable products in a variety of end markets.