PlantSea has been featured on CNN’s Blueprint series, which profiles innovators shaping the future in the UK. The piece, was filmed at AberInnovation at Aberystwyth University and went live on CNN Business at the end of March.
The same segment was used as the title piece of CNN 10 on 31 March 2026, “How seaweed could help turn the tide on plastic pollution”. CNN 10 is a daily ten-minute news programme made for middle and high school students in the US, so the piece reached two very different audiences in the same week: a global business audience through CNN Business, and the next generation of scientists, engineers and policymakers through CNN 10. To date our episode has received over 100k views and been liked over 1k times.
From Aberystwyth to CNN
What started as a small seaweed project in Aberystwyth during the 2020 lockdown is now preparing to scale into the thousands of tonnes. Six years ago we were experimenting with seaweed and its properties as a material. Now the next phase will be building the first demo biorefinery in North Wales, backed by a €3.5 million EIC Accelerator award, with a £1.8 million seed round behind us and paid pilots underway with global brands.
Filming with CNN took our co-founders Rhiannon Rees and Alex Newnes, and our Bioprocessing Associate Leon Williams, back to AberInnovation, where PlantSea launched. The CNN team filmed trials in progress, the kind of work that, until recently, only happened behind closed doors in our laboratory.
Turning the Tide on Plastic Pollution
Most people see “biodegradable” on a laundry capsule and trust the label. Coverage like Blueprint supports our work building public understanding and CNN 10 putting the question in front of our future scientists, engineers and policymakers is the icing on the cake.
Thank you to Leroy Ah Ben and Ed Scott-Clarke at CNN for choosing to feature PlantSea, and to the team at AberInnovation for hosting us all.
If you’re a film manufacturer or brand owner planning a move away from PVOH, or even a film crew looking to feature the next big sustainability story, you can get in touch with us here, we love to talk about what we’re doing!