About us

Oceana Organics consists of a team of two Marine Biologist and ad hoc hiring of extra labour when needed. Yvonne van Etten (MSc) has experience in general science and environmental law. Currently runs the company from an administrative perspective and reviews reports and papers. The journey of Dr Stefan Kraan began with a Masters in Marine Biology in the Rijks Universiteit Groningen in the Netherlands. 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 at the University Of Galway Ireland. 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, and biomaterials with as highlight SeaMeat™, a processed meat replacement ingredient. Dr Kraan stepped out of the Seaweed Company in December 2024 after a buyout of the company. Stefan was President of the International Seaweed Association (2016-2019) and is currently President for the International Society for Applied Phycology (2024-2027). He was 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 from 2019-2025. Currently he is developing seaweed cultivation in India, producing agarose , biostimulant and works on biopaper and bioplastics. Stefan in his position for Blaaker AS, Norway is also involved in developing and applying biodegradable rope for aquaculture and biodegradable materials for.  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.