Case Study: Seatreat Foods

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4.1 Market segmentation
SeaTreat Foods aims to cultivate seaweed for broad applications in multiple sectors. The multiple uses of seaweed based products allow us to provide products to a wide client base in the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and energy industries (as new opportunities open up).
Yet as a startup we will primarily focus on the cultivation and distribution of dried seaweed as an edible resource for human consumption in the food industry and as animal feedstock for the livestock industry, before targeting the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry with the use of seaweed as a green chemical substitute for fossil based chemicals. Lastly, the potential use of seaweed cultivation as a means of ecological recovery provides an avenue …show more content…

Our startup would stand to benefit in both cases. Lastly, The Noordzeeboerderij foundation in the Netherlands provides a network of seaweed industry stakeholders that continually researches new methods of seaweed harvesting, and is accessible to all members of the foundation [Noordzeeboerderij, 2017]. Through membership and cooperation our startup would benefit from the advances that will with time, edge out the advantages of the East Asian competitors and contribute to the development of the Dutch seaweed …show more content…

Alternatively, the companies
Agroflux and Merla Agribusiness B.V., focus on the sale of seaweed as animal feedstock, and in this way, they can also be seen as lesser direct competitors. In the case of our direct competitors, the argument can be made that current demand outstrips the supply, and therefore a new startup will have some breathing room to establish a foothold in the
Dutch seaweed market.
On the other hand, multiple companies have focused on specializing in specific areas of the seaweed product chain. Companies such as North Seaweed BV and the Seaweed Company have established themselves as purely distributors of seaweed related products, and therefore are not direct competitors of our cultivation department. More importantly, they can be utilized as business partners to buy a portion of our seaweed harvest for resale. Similarly, companies such as Olijck and Seamore focus solely on the production of value added seaweed products, hereby avoiding the actual cultivation of seaweed. Thus, they could also be seen as potential clients instead of

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