iCULTURE multistakeholder workshop “Ensuring sustainable seaweed biomass provision”

Keynote speaker at iCulture Workshop: Helena Abreu - EABA AlgaID & Partnerships Manager

We are pleased to share the invitation to the iCULTURE multistakeholder workshop “Ensuring sustainable seaweed biomass provision”, organised in the framework of the EU-funded iCULTURE project.  

The workshop will bring together policy, research and industry stakeholders to discuss how to ensure a sustainable, resilient and competitive seaweed sector in Europe. 

The first part of the workshop will feature keynote contributions from European policy, research and industry representatives, setting the scene on: 

• EU and regional policy frameworks for sustainable seaweed biomass provision; 

• Current and future seaweed biomass availability and demand scenarios; 

• Research, innovation and industrial pathways supporting circular and cascading value chains. 

The second part of the workshop will be fully interactive and focused on participants’ contributions. Through a facilitated discussion, you will be invited to highlight key challenges in sustainable seaweed biomass supply and management, identify technical, business and policy solutions, and co-create preliminary recommendations for future research and policy dialogue. 

Your experience and perspective would be extremely valuable in enriching this discussion and ensuring that the outcomes reflect real needs, constraints and opportunities across the algae value chain. 

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The European Union considers the algae sector an untapped renewable resource with strong potential to contribute to key policy frameworks such as the European Green Deal, Farm to Fork Strategy, Sustainable Blue Economy, Bioeconomy Strategy and the EU Biotech Act. Seaweed is recognised as a key contributor to a resilient and diversified biomass for food, feed, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, biostimulants and bio-based materials.

Despite strong policy ambition, the European algae sector remains limited and fragmented, relying largely on wild harvesting and facing challenges such as high production costs, fragmented governance, limited innovation uptake and regulatory complexity.

Seaweed cultivation and valorisation also contribute to climate change mitigation by supporting decarbonisation, removing CO₂ (blue carbon), reducing ocean acidification, and mitigating eutrophication through nutrient removal. Finally, circularity is a transversal objective across EU policies, that promote cascading use of seaweed biomass through biorefineries and biotech-enabled processing routes.

In this context, iCULTURE project is organising a multistakeholder workshop to discuss how to ensure sustainable seaweed biomass supply, paving the way for a competitive, climate-positive and resilient EU seaweed sector. It will focus on EU and regional policies on seaweed use and exploitation, current and future demand for seaweed biomass, innovation pathways and circular value chains. (...)