| Brown seaplants as raw materials for
alginates and other extracts.
One of the highest-profile and economically significant uses of several
species of brown algae is in their role as raw materials for extraction industries
that modify, extract and purify the chemical constituents known as
alginates and also their role as a source of hydrolysates, meals and
other products that serve as plant foods and animal feeds.
The SuriaLink Alginates
Community is being developed as an information source for this
important industry segment and we are also lining up trade facilitation
facilities to help buyers and sellers of these raw materials to do
business with each other.
The importance of
this Community is well illustrated by these points:
>>
Although brown seaweed genera such as Hizikia, Laminaria
and Undaria are important human food species, most of the world's
ca. million tons of harvested brown seaweeds go to production of
biopolymers (alginates) or are processed to make products for
agriculture such as animal feed supplements and plant food. Producing
countries include Argentina, Australia,
Canada, China,
Chile, France,
Iceland, India,
Ireland, Japan,
North
Korea, Norway, Philippines,
Portugal, South Africa,
South Korea, the UK,
the USA and Vietnam.
If at least 70% of total production goes to further processing then this
amounts to about 700,000 tons worth in excess of 140 M USD.
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