A Finnish biotech company (yes, another one!) wins the Sustainability category at Cosmopack Awards during Cosmoprof in Bologna, and we ask its Product Development Activist, Marc Desmarais, to explain what’s so groundbreaking from below the water surface. Quite a lot, it appears!

Finland continues to present superior–and scalable–biobased innovations to the world. Origin by Ocean was founded with the mission to “wash the oceans.” Invasive algae species are a huge problem all around the world, growing out of control due to climate change and eutrophication. When they start to grow out of control, they begin to negatively impact the ecosystem, their surrounding marine ecosystems, and the coastal communities living around them.  

– These species need to be removed and disposed of, and this is where Origin by Ocean comes in. We develop technologies to transform them into new value chains for industry, Desmarais explains.

The first project focuses on the Sargassum problem. It makes sense, given that it’s the largest current invasive seaweed problem in the world, and one of the biggest environmental catastrophes which we’re currently facing.  

– We work with local partners in the Caribbean and Mexico, where the algae is removed from the sea before it washes up on beaches, where it would begin to decompose and cause all sorts of environmental problems. By removing this algae, we help to regenerate and create new socio-economic opportunities.

Although harmful, harvesting wild algae can also be connected with certain restrictions, right?

– In this region, there are currently no restrictions. In fact, we get calls daily to help remove this algae, but for example, we know that in parts of Spain and Portugal, there are some invasive algae growing, but current government regulations do not allow it to be removed. The rules were really designed to protect these sensitive marine ecosystems, but they have not yet caught up to the reality of the ocean’s current health.

OK. And what is the algae used for in the products that you work with? What are the benefits?

– As mentioned, we’ve transformed the invasive Sargassum into a new supply chain. We look at it like any other business would look at their raw material supply chain, except in our case, we don’t have to grow it; it’s abundant, takes no land, doesn’t compete with the food chain, and it needs to be disposed of.  

– We process it through our biorefining technology into two key materials.

– Oceanthix is a biopolymer for elegant textures and rheology. It boosts viscosity and improves the feeling of natural gums, allowing formulators to create skincare and colour cosmetics textures with high-performance without compromising naturality and biodegradability. We won Sustainable Ingredient of the Year at the European Natural Beauty Awards last fall for this ingredient.

– Oceanboost is a powerful bioactive for inflammation defence. It tackles the cascade caused by chronic stress and inflammation in the skin, visibly reducing redness, irritation and sensitivity.  This is the active that won the award at Cosmoprof. They didn’t tell us much about why we won, but part of the application covered sustainability, scalability, supply chain and socio-economic contributions.

– At in-Cosmetics in two weeks, we will be launching our latest ingredient, Oceanboost UV, which is a specific grade tested for boosting the SPF levels of suncare.

You’ve previously been in a process to close a financial round and construct a biorefinery. Where are you in these processes?

– We are still in the process of closing our A round, and we can be quite open in saying that for us, and many other startups in the sustainability space, it’s a very tough market. There’s a bit of an unrealistic demand from investors today where they want to see offtakes—pre-commercial agreements—showing that you have at least 50% of your factory capacity pre-sold for 4-8 years.  While I understand that every investment needs some derisking, it’s quite a difficult task for innovators in the beauty industry like us. For commodities, we understand how offtake agreements work, but for specialised ingredients, it’s a very different process, and the investors don’t make the distinction. Overall, though, we have a lot of interested partners in this round, and we are working hard to complete one final engineering phase required by them, along with signing as many of these pre-commercial offtakes as possible to help de-risk the investment for these investment groups.

Origin by Ocean is currently trying to figure out how smaller, innovative, sustainable startups can come together and support each other and collectively stand-up to the well established and well funded petrochemical-based industry.  

– Earlier this year, Desmarais shares, we co-founded the Circular Cosmetics Collective alongside COLIPI, Gaia Tech, Innomost, Kaffe Bueno, Lignopure, NoPalm Ingredients, Swedish Algae Factory, and The Upcycled Beauty Company.  At in-Cosmetics Global, we will test this out for the first time with some activities and animations to drive more awareness to circular and sustainable ingredients. This requires support from brands, manufacturers, finance, and even from academia; we need all sectors of the industry to ralley and support sustainable ingredient manufacturing as we are all the future supply chains of the industry!