Brightplus and Origin by Ocean to Turn Seaweed into Biomaterials

Brightplus has announced a partnership with Origin by Ocean to explore the functionality of algae as an ingredient of biomaterials. Both Finnish companies share the common vision of easing the climate burden of our world by creating sustainable materials from biosources.

Brightplus is a pioneering materials company that creates reusable, recyclable and biodegradable side-stream material solutions using proprietary chemistry. Origin by Ocean, after more than 10 years of research, has started to process sea and ocean grown biomass to produce natural, sustainable ingredients for food, beverages, cosmetics and pharma.

Origin by Ocean’s vision is to build a new value chain around the eutrophication problem of oceans — by harvesting algae from the Baltic Sea and turning algae-based biomass into sustainable ingredients. These ingredients are currently used in the production of everyday consumer goods including food, beverages, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Seaweed’s natural building blocks give algae a wide array of sustainable and functional properties suitable for many different applications, including packaging.

Increasing the role of seaweed

“In our Nauvu^®​ biorefineries, we isolate various components from different naturally occurring seaweeds to create new sustainable raw materials. These components can, for example, increase the viscosity, adhesion and porosity of the material or give it different decorative features,” said Mikael Westerlund, Chief Business Activist from Origin by Ocean. “We greatly appreciate this collaboration and are happy to include our algae-based components into innovative biomaterials. There is clearly room for Origin by Ocean and Brightplus to increase the role of seaweed in future sustainable materials.”

For Brightplus, the redefined algae biomass offers a non-fossil-based side-stream for biosourced BrightBio^® materials. The cooperation focuses especially on examining the different decorative and barrier properties of seaweed-based biomass, which can provide, for example, haptic effects for glass coatings.

“There is a growing demand for algae-based synthetic biomaterials in Europe, and we are happy to start cooperating with an innovation leader such as Origin by Ocean. Algae is a naturally occurring side-stream that captures CO₂ efficiently. With a wide array of functional properties, it is an ideal component for our synthetic chemistry BrightBio^® materials,” said Milja Hannu-Kuure, Managing Director of Brightplus.