Future Food-Tech San Francisco 2026: Seaweed powder for clean label protein stabilization

Marine Biologics will debut a patent-pending, high-performance seaweed powder designed for protein stabilization at Future Food-Tech San Francisco, US, this week (Mar 19–20). The California-based firm says single-ingredient seaweed powder, branded SeaTex, “dramatically simplifies” product formulations with zero additives or synthetic ingredients.

SeaTex is described as a nutritional design tool that can suspend and stabilize nutritious ingredients in F&B applications, including fibers, minerals, and bioactives, and bind and structure fats and lipids. It is designed to provide a neutral taste.

With an “extremely low application rate,” it replaces multi-ingredient stabilization and buffering stacks with a single, clean label solution that can be reproduced consistently and at scale.

“Seaweed has long offered the promise of an abundant and renewable alternative ingredient, but a narrow understanding of its chemical composition and outdated production methods have led to highly refined ingredients that consumers are no longer interested in seeing on their ingredient labels,” says Marine Biologics CEO Patrick Griffin.

“With our breakthrough processing capabilities, we provide product developers and brand teams with new tools to meet consumer demands for cleaner labels.”

Targeting clean label demands

Innova Markets has found that global consumers are increasingly opting for clean label food and beverage products, as they prioritize transparency, health, and sustainability. Nearly one in two consumers purchased more fresh, unprocessed foods in the 12 months prior to March 2025.

Around 30% are reducing processed foods, while 27% are trying to limit products or ingredients perceived as harmful, such as artificial preservatives, sweeteners, and additives.Marine Biologics SeaTex seaweed powder.

However, the market researcher notes there is no single definition of “clean label,” despite growing consumer interest. The top three meanings global consumers associate with “clean label” trends are the absence of additives, the use of natural ingredients, and environmentally friendly positioning.

SeaTex supports the expanding clean functional ingredients market, which the company says has historically been constrained by inconsistent product composition, challenges in scaling production, and expensive, time-consuming R&D cycles.

Using MacroLink, “the first AI engine purpose-built for ingredient design,” Marine Biologics leverages predictive AI to compress clean label ingredient discovery from years to months, delivering consistent and economical global supply chain solutions like SeaTex.

SeaTex is “formulation-friendly” and can tolerate a wide range of pH and temperature requirements. It is sourced from GRAS, ocean-harvested brown seaweed. As a vegan ingredient, it contains no additives, synthetic ingredients, or carrageenans, allowing manufacturers to eliminate gums, buffers, and bulking agents from ingredient labels.

Marine Biologics’ innovation pipeline

Marine Biologics says it wants to create a “limitless pipeline” for clean food ingredients.

“SeaTex is the first manifestation of that and a powerful example of how technology can help unlock the full spectrum of natural, raw material-derived ingredients for the food industry,” says Griffin.

The company’s initial focus is on the production of seaweed-derived functional ingredients as scalable bulk materials benchmarked and digitized to serve as reliable manufacturing inputs.

Beyond SeaTex, other areas of innovation include clean label natural egg replacements, baking texturants, bioactives, and next-gen biopolymers for sustainable packaging.