Stefan Kraan

Stefan obtained his PhD on phylogenetics and aquaculture of edible seaweeds at the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2001. In parallel took the role as manager of the Irish Seaweed Industry Organisation and established the Irish Seaweed Centre in 2001, a dedicated R&D centre for seaweed-based research and development. After 10 years of running the centre he resigned to set up Ocean Harvest Technology Ltd to pursue and develop some commercial ideas using seaweeds for a variety of purposes amongst them functional food ingredients for fish farming and novel algae cultivation systems for biofuel production. After 8 years he resigned and co-founded The Seaweed Company in 2018. A company with complete horizontal integration developing the whole seaweed value chain from cultivation to biostimulant feed, food, biomaterials and Pharma. Stefan stepped out of the Seaweed Company in 2024 to pursue new ventures being partner of Blaaker AS in Norway developing biodegradable materials for seaweed cultivation (tropical and temperate) and aquaculture in general, TSC Purple in India developing cultivation of Gracilaria and Kappaphycus, biostimulant production and agarose and a JV in Indonesia on KSap and RDS.  Stefan was President of the International Seaweed Association (2016-2019) and is currently President for the International Society for Applied Phycology (2024-2027). Stefan was a business coach of 14 Indonesian seaweed companies under the Dutch Ministry of Economics and Climate Policy’s  development program (CBI/RVO) to help diversify and increase export to Europe. His main fields of expertise are aquaculture of seaweeds, sustainable development of algal resources, industrial applications of seaweeds and usage of seaweeds in animal feed, aquaculture, biotechnology and biomedicine.