Yantai Hongri Biotech Co., Ltd.

Yantai Hongri Biotech Co., Ltd. was founded in 2006 and is a privately owned business covering seaweed cultivation through to deep processing. It is based in the Xingcun industrial zone at Haiyang, Shandong province.

The site covers 60 acres with 20,000 square metres of building area and fixed assets of RMB 150 million. The company reports more than 300 employees, including a research team of over 20 people. Annual output is 5,000 tonnes of sodium alginate, split as 3,000 tonnes food grade and 2,000 tonnes industrial grade, and 3,000 tonnes of carrageenan, split as 2,000 tonnes refined and 1,000 tonnes semi-refined. Iodine, seaweed fertilizer and seaweed feed are made from the same raw material streams.

Sodium alginate is extracted from kelp and other brown algae and is a mixed polysaccharide of mannuronic and guluronic acid. Carrageenan is taken from red algae and is supplied in kappa, iota and lambda types, which differ in how the sulphate groups are bound and therefore in gel behaviour. The company has close to 20 years of alginate production behind it, holds its own import and export rights, and exports to more than 50 countries including Japan, South Korea, Germany, the United States, Spain, Pakistan and India.