Algae Green

Harvest of Ascophyllum nodosum

As it has been done traditionally for several centuries, all the seaweeds processed by OGT are harvested fresh by hand. The harvester (cutter) owns his harvesting license, usually transmitted from father to son.

At low tide, the harvester use's a knife  to cut the A. nodosum plant from the rock and make sure to leave at least 5 inches of the main shoot attached to rock; as explained above, this gentle harvesting technique allows the seaweed plant to grow again at a normal size within 3 - 5 years depending on the site exposition.

Once finished, the harvester gather's the cut seaweed plants together and tie's them with ropes in stacks or rafts also called “Climín” in Irish. Then, using small two men boats, the harvester's bring the seaweed rafts close to an adapted ramp where the seaweed can be transferred in bags and then collected by trucks. OGT’s raw material manager always keeps in close contact with harvesters to make sure that the seaweeds are directly collected from the shore when they bring the fresh seaweed to the ramp.

Sustainability of the natural resource via proper cutting technique, rotation schemes between sites and freshness of the resource are the key lmotive's of OGT in relation to this natural resource.

When the seaweed loads arrive at the production plant in Kilcar, the seaweeds are either processed directly or stored in huge cold rooms until processing. This system guarantee's the freshness of the seaweed processed and a proper management of the production line flow.

The process:

The seaweeds are hand-inspected, sorted, washed and then cut to a pre-defined size before the extraction process.

OGT has developed at an industrial scale a new way of bursting the cells of the seaweeds without using any chemicals or heat.

Once extracted, the product is concentrated to the desired concentration before filtration to guaranty it,s maximum solubility.

Why a cold process?

The reference word "extraction" means a way of accessing the key ingredients of the seaweed and releasing it into a final product called "extract".

For several decennies, seaweed extracts are mainly produced using either heat and/or chemicals in order to extract these ingredients.

Synthetic chemicals can be dangerous and harmfull both for health and environment. They are heavily regulated in numerous applications. They can also modify the natural composition of the seaweed components by binding them and therefore limit their efficiency. However, this also presents a way to complement the extracts in chemicals.

Heat, when applied over 40°C, alters the natural structure of numerous bioactive compounds, and, for some of them, just break them up to full degradation. Once the biochemical form of the compounds is altered, the natural function of this compound will be limited and, in most cases, inactivated.

OGT's cold process keeps the bioactive molecules naturally present in the seaweed and as intact as possible. The burst of the seaweed cell walls allows the release of the main bioactive compounds into the liquid fraction of the product which leads to a 100% soluble product. Therefore Algaegreen contains all the natural, key compounds of the fresh seaweed beneficial to any living organisms, plants (grass), animals and humans:

• More than 60 micro- and macro-elements, mainly bioavailable including Potassium, Chloride, Calcium, Sodium, Sulphur, Nitrogen, Magnesium, Iron etc...
• 3 polysaccharides, mainly sodium alginate and also laminaran  (beta glucans - precursor oligosaccharides) and fucoidan (sulfated fucose rich polysaccharides)
• Vitamins: brown seaweeds do not have large amounts of vitamins but decent quantities of Vit A, C and E. Those are known antioxidants.
• Polyphenols: brown seaweeds and in particular these species contain quite high proportions of polyphenols (called tannins in grape); these polyphenols have high antioxidant activities 
• Pigments: Fucoxanthin is, with chlorophylla, the main pigment in these species. These compounds are very strong photoprotectors and also antioxidant 
• For plant / Grass applications, plant hormone-like molecules: as any other plant, seaweeds do have plant hormone-like molecules naturally with some variations along the year. Auxins are the most predominant plant hormone types in these seaweeds.

A wide part of these compounds are heat sensitive which explains the strategic choice of OGT's team of having developped  this new cold process industrial technique.