Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based algae biotechnology company Mara Renewables has raised USD 9.1 million (EUR 7.7 million) in funding from S2G investments – a multi-stage investment firm focused on scaling solutions across oceans, food and agriculture, and energy – to support its sustainable omega-3 platform.
Mara derives its omega-3 DHA from algae, which it said is the first link in the ocean-wide food chain that produces traditional omega-3 sources like salmon. The company said it hopes that – with S2G’s support – it will soon fully commercialize globally to address worldwide deficiencies in the vital nutrient experienced by about 85 percent of the global population.
According to Mara and S2G, algal-sourced omega-3 DHA represents both a major value proposition and a huge sustainability opportunity, since consumer demand for the nutrient far outpaces what the oceans can provide and fish stocks from which omega-3s are traditionally derived are already overtaxed.
Mara CEO Harry Boot told SeafoodSource that 92 percent of omega-3 DHAs found in consumers’ diets currently come from fish oil, the market for which has seen double-digit growth in recent years.
“You simply can’t be extracting more and more from the ocean – it’s not a winning formula,” Boot said.
Outside the economics of the growing market the world also needs much more of the vital nutritional lipid, Boot said, noting that malnutrition affecting children globally has wide-reaching and long-term effects for nations and economies – a point which the W.H.O. has also made. Omega-3 DHA is a nutritional lipid that supports cognitive function, vision, cardiovascular performance, and prenatal development and has applications in infant formula, dietary supplements, functional foods, animal health, and aquaculture nutrition.
Mara is currently focused on bringing the nutrient to consumers through four pillars: infant formula, poultry feed, nutritional supplements, and food services.
Boot, who joined the company in mid-2023, said he is working hard to set up production and distribution networks worldwide.
“For Mara [right now] it’s about that global expansion. My vision is really to have a supply chain which is going to bring those solutions to the consumer, in the Americas from the Americas, in Europe from Europe, in Africa from Africa, and in the Asia-Pacific,” said Boot.
This vision is being realized through partnerships all over the world which will distribute and market Mara’s omega-3s, with participation both from huge global brands like Maruhu Nichiro and Nestle and from boutique companies like U.S.-based supplement-company Ritual.
Mara’s omega-3s are created from the same microalgae which make up the first link in the food chain that ends with wild-caught fish; Mara simply bypasses the rest of the food chain to create omega-3s directly from the algae.
This is achieved through patented fermentation technology which allows the company to cultivate microalgae in controlled lab environments.
“We go directly to the source,” said Boot.
Boot said Mara’s process creates a clean omega-3 DHA, without a fishy taste or smell.
There are numerous other benefits of seeking the source of omega-3 DHA in algae, said Boot. For one, the amount of omega-3s that can be derived from a given number of fish is unstable. Some years, Boot explained, wild caught fish yields much higher levels of omega-3s than others.
This means that the price of wild-caught fish-derived omega-3s is unstable, making it hard for businesses which need to purchase it to plan ahead.
By contrast, a business like Nestle, which uses Mara’s omega-3s for its infant formula, can more precisely understand how much omega-3 will be in their products and plan accordingly.
Boot also said that there is enormous indirect nutritional value in Mara’s product. While Mara’s omega-3s are added directly to products consumed by people like infant formulas, functional foods, and dietary supplements, they are growing more and more popular in animal feeds – providing nutrition to humans who eat eggs or poultry which themselves ate feed enriched with Mara’s omega-3 DHA.
U.K.-based supermarket brand Marks and Spencer, for instance, now uses Mara’s omega-3 DHA in all its poultry feed.
Another benefit to algal omega-3s is that they do not contain any heavy metals, which must be extracted from traditional fish oils, subjecting them to further processing – which also does not remove all such metals.
Boot said he joined Mara because he was challenged by his wife to find a value proposition that was truly sustainable. The opportunity at Mara, he said, offered significant shareholder value in a growing market that would also address a huge nutritional gap and take pressure off ocean ecologies, making it a win-win.
Boot said Mara’s potential to alleviate over-fishing of wild stocks is significant. In 2024, for instance, the company produced enough algal DHA to offset an estimated 6.7 billion anchovies from the supply chain.
S2G Oceans Strategy Managing Director Larsen Mettler said that Mara will be key to future supplies of omega-3s.
“In our view, Mara is solving a fundamental supply chain challenge with precision and scale,” Mettler said. “They have built an end-to-end platform that delivers consistent, clean, and high-quality omega-3s without relying on depleted fisheries.”
For Boot, bringing omega-3 DHA to the world in an accessible, sustainable form has become a true passion, because it “truly makes a difference in peoples’ lives.”
“I wake up in the morning thinking about DHA, and in the evening when I go to bed, I’m still thinking about DHA,” Boot said. “That’s the only thing that we do. We’re only focused, and I would say obsessed, with trying to get DHA to the market place."
