The Company

Vetik is an Estonian startup founded in 2017. The company’s aim is to valorise red seaweed (Furcellaria lumbricalis) from Estonian waters which the company has license to harvest 1000 tons per year. Vetik core team has strong science background and long experience in seaweed harvesting. Vetik has enrolled in different accelerator programs like EIT Climate-KIC accelerator program, Blue Bio Value accelerator program in Portugal and they were also a previous case in Baltic Blue Biotechnology Alliance. Vetik has collaboration with many universities, technology centers and companies from Estonia, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal. Vetik has been able to receive around 245 000 EUR non-equity financing as grants and prizes (e.g. they shared first prize in Prototron competition out of 287 startups).

Product

The first product Vetik is developing is a red colorant for cosmetics which could substitute the synthetic colorants used in today’s cosmetics. In addition to giving red color, the colorant from seaweed is potentially an active ingredient which gives skin rejuvenating properties. The target customers are medium sized cosmetic companies who make natural and vegan skincare and make-up products. There are over 30 cosmetic companies already waiting for the samples. Vetik is currently in the process of finalizing industrial method of production, final product development and safety/efficacy assessment. Thanks to Horizon2020 microgrant and technology partners RISE from Sweden and Leitat from Spain, the prototype of the colorant will be tested in final products (lipstick and skin cream) by the end of March 2020.

Vetik has also started developing additional products from the side streams of production (e.g fertilizers, biostimulants, biomaterials).

Need

Vetik is looking for partner for further product development and efficiency/safety analysis of the red colorant and other side products (fertilisers, biostimulants, biomaterials). For that, Vetik is opened to collaborations as funded projects. Although Vetik is able to bootstrap to the market, they are also considering finding 200 000 EUR as investments and grants to fully develop industrial scale production line, finalize the product and enter the market in a faster pace.