SARGUM is a sargassum-derived biodegradable plastic pellet built with Altus Polymers and Azul Biotechnologies. Beach-collected and ocean-farmed seaweed in, drop-in replacement for petroleum plastic out — at price parity, scalable, and demanding no freshwater, no land, no fertilizer.
In May 2025, the Atlantic carried 38 million metric tons of sargassum — the largest bloom on record, smothering Caribbean beaches, killing fisheries, and costing tourism boards millions in cleanup. Most regional responses treat sargassum as waste to be moved. SARGUM treats it as the raw material for a competitive bioplastic.
Beach-collected and ocean-farmed sargassum is dried and processed through an ultrasonic biopolymer extraction stage. The extracted biopolymer (33–54% of dry weight depending on species) is then blended and pelletized into a drop-in resin compatible with existing plastic-manufacturing equipment. No retrofits required for downstream manufacturers — the pellet behaves like the petroleum stuff their lines were built to run.
The thing that kills most bioplastics isn't the chemistry — it's that they cost twice as much as the petroleum benchmark and brands won't eat the margin. SARGUM at pilot scale is materially close to parity:
Three open challenges, addressed honestly:
Feedstock variability. Sargassum yield varies by season, location, and species. We're building a multi-source supply model rather than betting on a single landing site.
Harvest impact. Large-scale collection has ecological footprints. We prioritize already-stranded sargassum and partnered ocean farms over open-water harvesting.
Competitive landscape. Corn PLA, sugarcane, potato starch — the bioplastic field is crowded. Sargassum's unique pitch is that the feedstock is a regional liability we're getting paid (in cleanup credits and tourism preservation) to consume.
If SARGUM scales, the Eastern US and Caribbean gain a regional bioplastic supply chain whose growth is desirable — every ton of feedstock harvested is a ton of beach restored, a ton of carbon sequestered, a ton not buried in landfill. That's the unusual property that makes this worth working on.