Birufinery: Tropical Seaweed

Birufinery

Birufinery: Tropical Seaweed

An end-to-end seaweed venture, we produce new downstream applications, like biostimulant, from corporate-plasma smallholder seaweed farm partnership.

Jakarta, Indonesia

IDN

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

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25% of CO2 emmissions are absorbed by the ocean, increasing ocean acidity by 30% since the pre-industrial era. Moreover, 500 dead zones covering 250,000 km2 formed due to excess nutrients into the sea, largely from agriculture, increasing ocean eutrophication that negatively impact the marine ecosystems and fisheries. Meanwhile, excessive chemical fertilizer worldwide use has degraded the soil and in turn reduced agriculture productivity as well as disrupted the carbon cycle and emitted greenhouse gases, particularly nitrous oxide. Globally, 1 Billion people live in tropical coastal areas. In Indonesia alone, 150 million people live in the coastal area, with 7 million people relying directly on the ocean for their livelihoods and 1.3 million living below the poverty line. In East Nusa Tenggara, one of the country’s poorest and most remote provinces where Birufinery operates, declining fish stocks are worsening already fragile livelihoods. Seaweed is a promising solution: it can reduce ocean acidity and eutrophication, and can be proceessed into agriculture biostimulant that remediates soil and induce crop growth. However, most seaweed biostimulants rely on wild or costly and scarce temperate seaweed. Birufinery’s biostimulant, made from tropical seaweed cultivated in partnership with local communities, offers an affordable, sustainable alternative to the current agriculture practices.

Birufinery is an end-to-end tropical seaweed venture, pioneering the first corporate-plasma smallholder farming partnership and processing it into new downstream seaweed applications, starting from agriculture biostimulant. Birufinery biostimulant has shown up to 85% improvement in plant growth even with 30% reduced chemical fertilizer in palm oil, chili, and other various crops. The corporate-plasma smallholder farming partnership—an approach common in land agriculture but new to seaweed—is done to drive innovation in farming and ensure consistent seaweed supply and quality, while providing social and environmental impact in coastal communities. Birufinery will not only operate the seaweed farming in its corporate-owned farm, but also operate seaweed seedling nursery, centralized drying and post-harvest processing unit, as well as seaweed micro-refinery unit, guaranteeing consistent raw seaweed supply and quality. In addition, to achieve economics of scale, Birufinery provides seedling and farming equipments to third party plasma smallholder farmers in the surrounding area and then offtake, aggregate, and process all the combined harvest. Birufinery revenue comes from 2 B2B streams: 1) seaweed-based biostimulant sold to plantations and 2) excess dried raw seaweed sold to exporters and other downstream processors. In 3-5 years, Birufinery will develop other downstream seaweed applications such as animal feed and cosmetics ingredients.

Globally, there are 1 Billion people living in tropical coastal areas; in Indonesia alone around 150 million people live in the coastal area, with 7 million people directly depend on the ocean for their livelihoods. About 1.3 million Indonesian living in the coastal areas live below the poverty line of less than $2 a day, and their situation are worsen due to the declining fish stocks. Birufinery currently operates in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), Indonesia, one of the poorest and most remote provinces in Indonesia that heavily depends on the ocean to survive. Almost all of the coastal communities living there have multiple sources of income that depends heavily on the ocean: mostly through fisheries and some already through seaweed farming. By establishing large-scale corporate-plasma smallholder seaweed farming partnership, we can support the coastal communities directly and indirectly. We support them directly through the increase in income by employing them in our corporate-owned farm or by providing them with superior seaweed seedling and farm equipments then offtaking their harvest. We support them indirectly through the positive effects that seaweed bring to the marine ecosystem, which eventually can help replenish the fish and marine species stocks.