If taste, texture and affordability are the holy grail of new ingredients, Seafibrex, the new seaweed-based powder from BioMara is a triple threat.
But by adding two more impressive benefits – sustainability and nutritional functionality – the Scottish biotech firm eclipsed the competition to win the European heat of the Global Food Tech Awards 2025.
Founder and CEO Jay Dignan received the trophy at Future Food-Tech London alongside runners up Clean Food Group and Kokomodo.
‘Complete valorization of seaweed was a distinguishing factor behind BioMara’s high score versus other entrants,’ said one of the judges, Eric Weisser Head of Open Innovation and Customer Innovation at Ingredion. ‘It shows strong texture and health benefits too.’
Fellow judge, FoodNavigator’s Flora Southey agreed while signalling future competition in this area. ‘Seaweed has enormous potential in food applications,’ she said. ‘I predict this trend will grow.’
As well as BioMara’s functional food that delivers minerals, fibre, vitamins, proteins and carbohydrates and has a range of food applications, entries included alternative ingredients to replace challenged commodities, such as Kokomodo’s cultivated cocoa and Clean Food Group’s palm oil replacement. Other start-ups in this competitive field of innovators explored proteins from microalgae (Nutrition from Water), compostable packaging (Grinove Materials) and another cocoa substitute, this time a redux of carob from Italian brand Foreverland.
As well as assessing scalability, novelty, market opportunity, judges considered sustainability, an apt area during FoodNavigator’s Sustainable September campaign where we’re shining a light on technologies, studies and brands helping to combat the climate crisis.
BioMara’s win follows Hydrosome Lab’s triumph in the America’s heat that was presented at Future Food-Tech in San Francisco in March. The Chicago-based start-up uses a natural, chemical-free microbubble process to enhance fermentation performance.
Judging for the APAC heat begins next month and winners and finalists from this region will join the ten finalists from EMEA and the Americas in a final round of judging, where FoodNavigator’s editorial team will determine which firm will win the title of the world’s best food-tech innovation for 2025.
But for now, congratulations to BioMara and all the finalists for driving innovation and shaping the future of food!
The Global Food Tech Awards European heat top ten
- BioMara (winner)
- Clean Food Group (runner up)
- Kokomodo (runner up)
- Polysense (finalist)
- Nutrition from Water (NXW) (finalist)
- SCO2 (finalist)
- Kyomei (finalist)
- Foreverland (finalist)
- 2nd Nature (finalist)
- Grinove Materials (finalist)
The APAC heat of the Global Food Tech Awards is open for a few more days. Closing on September 30, 2025, the winner will be announced at the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit in Singapore November 4-6, 2025. To enter visit the website here.
