Seawin Biotech: Committed to global green planting service

Over recent years the unreasonable use of fertilizer has caused apparent environmental problems, resulting in continued threats to the quality of farm product. Under such a circumstance, the emerging seaweed fertilizer, as a green, safe and functional fertilizer has become popular in the industry. After expeditions for many years, Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group Ltd has endeavored to utilize its resource and technical capability to have successfully redeveloped the seaweed fertilizer. Now Seawin Biotech not only becomes a Chinese seaweed fertilizer industry leader, but also acts as a driving force to the development of a green fertilizer industry. Recently AgroPages had an interview with Shan Junwei the board chairman of Seawin Biotech with discussion on the development of the industry.

To Change the conventional concept for broader applications

According to Mr Shan, conventionally seaweed fertilizer could only mean seaweed extracts including seaweed polysaccharide and the rest of the seaweed active substances, being regarded as biostimulant. Biostimulant has the function of enhancing crop’s nutrient element utilization, water retention capacity and metastasis to accelerate photosynthesis which stimulates the crop growth and yield. Seawin Biotech takes an innovative step to add seaweed extracts into conventional fertilizer to elevate the fertilizer efficiency and reduce quantity of applied fertilizer to achieve the goal of increase of yield without environmental impact. As a result the concept of seaweed fertilizer has changed substantially, enabling the birth of a novel fertilizer with seaweed additive.

The change of the concept gives seaweed fertilizer bright future and enormous vitality. It is the seaweed polysaccharide in the seaweed extracts that affects the growth of crops; a 1% seaweed polysaccharide additive causes significant effect. Fertilizer added with seaweed polysaccharide generates higher fertilizer efficiency, better protects crop root system, enhances crop stress resistance and improves soil condition.

“Although it is still constrained by farmer’s limited awareness and so far seaweed fertilizer is mostly applied to high-value commercial crop, yet the seaweed fertilizer market is moving toward satisfactory and rapid expansion with the continued development of green high-efficiency agriculture”, said Mr Shan.

To collaborate toward the “double-seaweed” epochs

Seaweed polysaccharide is the core crude of seaweed fertilizer; however seaweed polysaccharide used to be always originated from the prime green seaweed enteromorpha in coastal area. Tests reveal the macro-molecular structure of brown seaweed polysaccharide and slower absorption by crops while green seaweed polysaccharide is of micro-molecular structure which is quickly utilized by crops after applied to soil. In another word, brown seaweed polysaccharide is of slow-release and green seaweed polysaccharide is of fast-release; to put together the two enables fertilizer to have a combined slow-release and fast-release function.
 
Guided by this theory, the R & D of Seawin Biotech focused on the double-seaweed applications, having cooperated with local government in the establishment of a value-added enteromorpha project which was brought on stream in September 2014. In order to ensure sufficient supply of enteromorpha, in 2014 Seawin Biotech started using its 4000-ton seaweed maritime retriever platform - Seawinner to carry out the integrated retrieving and extraction works.

Seawin Biotech not only possesses the advanced double-seaweed concept and rich crude, but also a strong research capacity and superior quality of product which is a solid backup for its competitive edge.

The activity of seaweed polysaccharide is a good basis for the special functioning of seaweed; its process of extraction directly affects the extraction rate, stability and efficacy of active ingredient. In view of the shortcomings of acid-base seaweed polysaccharide extraction method, Seawin Biotech has developed a compound bio-enzyme hydrolysis for extraction of seaweed polysaccharide. The process has the advantage of mild working, easy impurity removal, higher yield, accelerated dissolving speed of seaweed polysaccharide and keeping the biological activity to stay the same as much as possible. Meanwhile the process enables the reuse of reclaimed water instead of sewagedischarge, as well as recycled use of seaweed and kelp residues for production of organic / inorganic compound fertilizer.

Mr Shan is of the opinion that a technology-driven enterprise should not only focus on research and innovation, but should form a high-efficient research, marketing and production synergy. At present Seawin Biotech has 3 technical research platforms respectively at national and local levels, which form a unique technical marketing pattern, accompanied by provision of terminal service. It is this all-round service coverage that has contributed to the rapid and sound development of Seawin Biotech.

To lead the Industry toward global green planting service

“As an industry leader, we need to discover and foster the industry”, said Mr Shan, who keeps saying in the conversation that Seawin Biotech assumes responsibility for the healthy development of the industry. Chemical fertilizer is irreplaceable for the growth of plants while the redefinition of seaweed fertilizer well complies with the sustainable development strategy of Chinese agriculture.

Since its founding in 2000, Seawin Biotech perseveres to the “green and high efficiency” philosophy and assumes responsibility for supply of quality product to users. Seawin Biotech believes that a product which creates value for customers will surely be acknowledged by the market. It is with such perseverance and dedication that Seawin Biotech has gradually cultivated an environment-friendly industry in the course of the development of the seaweed fertilizer.

Taking an example of the Seawinner concentrated seaweed fertilizer, which was a drummed fertilizer released by Seawin Biotech 13 years ago, now in its 3rd generation. Before the release of this product, market was full of fertilizers containing hormone which is of fast effect and cheap price. However as time goes by, a lot of fertilizers containing hormone have pulled out of the market but by contrast the concentrated seaweed fertilizer is growing year by year.

This year China put forward the goal of fertilizer-use zero growth by 2020, which attracts the attention of the whole industry to the use rate and functionality of fertilizer; at this time the advantage of seaweed fertilizer becomes evident. Over the last years Seawin Biotech has been actively promoting the popularity of seaweed fertilizer and the progressing of the industry development, especially by the combination with conventional fertilizer, for instance the nitrogen fertilizer in collaboration with Sinochem and Luxi Chemical. Also Seawin Biotech participated in the preparation of national standards for the industry.

Mr Shan summarized the health concept of seaweed fertilizer – health is rooted in the soil at the very beginning, then health is passed on to mankind to facilitate achievement of human health via food chain. Mr Shan said that there is a saying within the company which goes as “Committed to Global Green Planting Service”. This is an aspiration of Seawin Biotech, not only a saying but a down-to-earth doing.

To move up to the upstream industry
 
 As backed up by the technical strength of China Ocean University, Seawin Biotech’s research of seaweed fertilizer is becoming more and more complete toward establishment of environment-friendly novel fertilizer product chains. Taking enteromorpha as an example, this single item forms a product chain covering various products which include enteromorpha powder, enteromorpha polysaccharide, novel nitrogen fertilizer synergist and nitrogen fertilizer containing green seaweed polysaccharide.

Speaking of future development, Mr Shan holds the view that this business has a promising future due to the solid foundation laid in the last years such as the distinctive technical strength, government support, intellectual resource and brand image. In the years ahead, the primary business of Seawin Biotech is going to grow bigger and bigger with more investment. In the meantime effort will be made to move toward upstream productions like pharmaceutical intermediates including feedstuff additives, which will be another pillar of the company. Seawin Biotech expects to further grow its research and marketing capability to become a featured resource development enterprise with scale of economy.

Mr Shan believes that seaweed fertilizer will burst into growth in Chinese market someday in the future. With the grown influence of brand image of Seawin Biotech overseas, Mr Shan has every confidence in the international market. A 30-40% sales growth is expected in 2015.