Edible Seaweed Supplier for Foodservice, Retail and Snack Makers

Product overview

Dried seaweed is traded less on name than on species and cut: a buyer asking for nori or wakame still needs to fix the species, harvest season, sheet or cut size and color grade before two offers can be compared. Our range covers laver (Pyropia yezoensis and Pyropia haitanensis), wakame (Undaria pinnatifida), hijiki (Sargassum fusiforme) and red seaweeds such as Chondrus crispus, Gracilaria and Eucheuma, which are sold as sea moss or supplied to agar and carrageenan processors.

Most volume comes from farmed crops in China, South Korea and Japan, with red seaweeds also sourced from South-East Asia and other tropical growing areas. Laver is formed into sheets and dried, then offered raw or roasted; wakame is blanched, salted, desalted, cut and dried; hijiki is boiled and dried, then separated into bud and stem grades. Grading looks at color and gloss, sheet thickness and holes, consistency of cut size, and foreign matter such as shell fragments, sand and other algae.

Foodservice buyers take full sheets for sushi and rice balls and small-cut wakame for soups, retailers favor consumer packs, and snack makers work with roasted sheets or flakes for seasoning. Seaweed takes up certain elements from seawater, so heavy-metal and iodine testing is arranged on request against the limits of each destination. Hijiki needs particular attention: several food authorities have published consumer advice on its inorganic arsenic content, so we test it per destination limits and ask buyers to confirm it can be marketed where they sell.

Retail and own-brand seaweed lines can be packed under our wholesale and private-label program, and laver pairs naturally with dried shrimp in the familiar Chinese laver-and-shrimp soup. Importers new to the category will find that our notes on what to check before ordering dried seafood apply equally to dried seaweed.