The Antigua and Barbuda Department of Analytical Services shipped 202lbs of the invasive sargassum
seaweed to Finland. On the receiving end will be Origin by Ocean a Finnish company being incubated
within the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) Global Innovation Centre (GIC) in Sweden.
Today’s shipment is the first phase of a project being developed by Origin by Ocean to design a new
biorefinery process (Nauvu®) for the extraction of biomolecules for use in food, cosmetics, and domestic
detergent, all from marine biomass. This first shipment of seaweed will be used by the company to do
initial reference trials of the Nauvu® process against the benchmark feedstock of Bladderwrack
seaweed.
The collaboration between Origin by Ocean and the Department of Analytical Services is made possible
because of the synergies currently being established between the UNOPS GICs across Antigua, Sweden
and Japan. In Antigua, the GIC is a collaboration between UNOPS and the Antigua and Barbuda Science
Innovation Park (ABSIP).
A second, larger batch of sargassum is expected to be shipped in the coming weeks and will be used for
the initial process trials with sargassum seaweed.