WA-based SeaStock scoops international award for work producing methane-busting seaweed for cattle

A WA-based company harvesting methane-busting seaweed to reduce greenhouse emissions in cattle has been named one of the world’s best startups focused on climate change. Tom Puddy’s carbon abatement technology company SeaStock, which launched in Perth in September 2021, won the Louis Dreyfus Company Climate Resilience Prize at the MassChallenge Switzerland Awards Ceremony in Switzerland on October 27. SeaStock was the only Australian company to take home a prize at the prestigious European-based global competition designed to give startups focused on climate change access to potential multi-national investors, after facing off against 1200 entrants. The company was recognised for its technology-based approach to help the agriculture industry slash greenhouse gas emissions and took home $225,000 for its efforts. SeaStock was the first in WA and is just one of nine companies globally — including five in Australia and New Zealand — licensed by Future Feed, which holds the global IP for Asparagopsis in livestock feed. Asparagopsis contains the bioactive chemical Bromoform, which — according to research by the CSIRO, James Cook University and Meat and Livestock Australia — can reduce methane by up to 98 per cent when passed into the stomach of ruminant livestock. Mr Puddy, who travelled to Switzerland with SeaStock director Greg Harvey, said the win was recognition of the “very real” commercial potential of its land-based Asparagopsis cultivation and extraction technology. “We have been judged by some of Europe’s largest commercial corporations with significant global footprints … looking for immediate solutions to reducing the impact of their supply chains,” he said. “I am incredibly proud of our team and the industry partners we have worked closely with … following a rigorous selection process that saw us make multiple trips to Europe. “What we now need to capitalise on this level of global recognition is support and investment to scale commercially and to do so in a fairly rapid time frame. “We need the support of governments to do this and to help primary producers to incorporate cost-effective, proven and sustainable solutions into their operations.” The award comes after SeaStock was named one of 112 global startups to take part in the MassChallenge Switzerland 2023 accelerator program, after more than 1000 applied. Mass Challenge Switzerland partners Buhler Group, Givaudan, Nestle, DSM, Louis Dreyfus Company and Sudzucker promote the challenge as a way for winners to interact with multi-nationals and potential investors. Mass Challenge president Ian Roberts said SeaStock’s potential to “plug into the existing supply chain” made its technology attractive because it could “scale fast” to cut emissions in the short and medium term. SeaStock completed its first commercial Asparagopsis harvest at the Abrolhos Islands in November last year and has set up a commercial headquarters and pilot plant at Fremantle. It hopes to open a commercial plant in regional WA next year with a focus on land-based cultivation. Flinders University scientists working with SeaStock in December revealed they had successful grown the red aglae Asparagopsis Taxiformix from scratch in their lab.