Speaker

About the speaker: 

As head of R&D Urd Bak leads Ocean Rainforest’s involvement in international research and innovation projects within macroalgal cultivation and processing. She holds an industrial PhD in macroalgal cultivation in the Faroe Islands and has more than a decade of hands-on experience. Her work spans project management of major Horizon Europe initiatives, like SeaMark and MacroCascade, aiming to develop large-scale cultivation methods that bring down cost and increase yield, advancing sustainable seaweed-based solutions for agriculture products, food & feed ingredients, and bio-based industries.

Company info:

Ocean Rainforest is a pioneering seaweed cultivation and processing company operating in the North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. The organisation cultivates sustainable seaweed and through environmentally friendly processing producing biostimulant and biocontrol products as well as healthy fermented feed. Ocean Rainforests mission is to become the most reliable seaweed supplier in Europe and North America. Ocean Rainforest’s work supports the emerging blue bioeconomy through innovation in seeding technologies, offshore farming, biorefinery and processing techniques to produce and sell high quality products.

Presentation: 

Urd Bak will present some of the key findings from the Horizon Europe project SeaMark, where 25 partners have, over the past four years, advanced European seaweed cultivation to a new level that will shape the sector’s future. It explores how sustainable land-based and offshore cultivation of Saccharina and Ulva can be accelerated, alongside major progress in biorefinery and fermentation processes enabling both high-value and commodity products with multiple applications and end-users. The talk will also address advances in selective breeding, scalable cultivation technologies, and new insights from leading researchers on socio-economic and technical assessments, including Ecosystem Services and Life Cycle Assessments. In addition, SeaMark has actively engaged legislators, investors, and policy makers to support safe and regenerative scaling and by this wish to promote financial and social growth while ensuring positive environmental impact.