MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Dominican Republic plans to clear sargassum from beaches working with organic certified company

Because of climate change conditions, according to scientists, the 'plague' invasion of sargassum seaweed, has become a repeated nuisance in the Caribbean and Mexican coastlines

A Finnish algae processing company is considering installing a plant in the Dominican Republic given the negative impact of the sargassum seaweed invasion of its beaches and tourism industry.

Origin by Ocean representative in the Dominican Republic, Marcos Días, a former Sports minister said that the processing plant is part of the second phase of operations plan of the company, which last June started the export of sargassum to Finland collected to the east of the island state.

Because of climate change conditions, according to scientists, the 'plague' invasion of sargassum, has become a repeated nuisance in the Caribbean and Mexican coastlines.

“We discovered that the Dominican Republic lent itself to be the place to start the first phase, with the company transferring raw sargassum to its plant in Finland,” he said.

Díaz pointed out that the first phase of the project contemplates the export in a year of 100 containers, which can store between 20 and 40 tons of algae, through the collection of sargassum from the coast and then “remove it without losing moisture and nutrients, freeze it, and later transfer it to Finland for use.”

The former official stated that, once this part is completed, they hope to be able to generate a large-scale solution to sargassum with the plant, since the algae could be processed a few meters from where it is removed.

Díaz said that the Origin by Ocean uses sargassum to create dyes, food thickeners “for products that want to maintain a vegan certification” and organic cosmetics.

Origin by Ocean exports sargassum with the collaboration of other environmental concerned organizations such as SOS Carbón, Grupo Puntacana and Nodo Logistics