Follow up the new standards on Algae and Algae products published by CEN

The worldwide market for algae products is estimated to grow at a growth rate close to 5% in the next 3 years. Some reasons for this is an increased demand for natural products and ensuring sustainable development of cosmetic, pharma or energy applications, which requires defining quality, safety criteria and associated assessment methods.

Follow the new standardization developments in Algae and Algae products and their applications in food, cosmetic, pharma, chemical or energy (biofuel). The European Committee on Standardization (CEN) is publishing a series of interesting standards, reports and other standardization deliverables to boost the algae industry.

SEE BELOW THE LIST OF PUBLISHED STANDARDS AND TECHNICAL REPORTS ON ALGAE AND ALGAE PRODUCTS

The CEN Technical report, CEN/TR 17559, provides agreed quality designations and indications for algae and directly derived products from algae production required for a wide range of food and feed applications, such as:

• producers of food based on algae,
• feed or nutraceuticals or animal food producers and industry.
  It provides a general overview of agreed limits, consensus-based procedures and methods of analysis for food and feed applications.

The CEN Technical report, CEN/TR 17611:2021, provides consensus-based specifications for applications in the cosmetic sector, whilst the technical report provides a set of recommendations on product specifications, and other relevant information, for algae and algae products for pharmaceutical applications.

The biofuel applications of algae and algae products are also a very relevant and interesting market opportunity, contributing to sustainability. CEN/TR 17739:2021 is a good reference document to learn how quality indicating parameters for algae and algae products and intermediates relevant for chemical and bioenergy applications can be handled and to identify the need for future standards development for chemicals, bioenergy and biofuels applications.

In addition, two European standards provide essential tools for this emerging industry:

• EN 17477:2021, which specifies a method for the detection and identification of microalgae, macroalgae, cyanobacteria and Labyrinthulomycetes by using morphological methods and/or molecular methods. This standard is applicable to harvested wet biomass and to harvested dried unground biomass from microalgae, macroalgae, cyanobacteria and Labyrinthulomycetes that have been grown and/or harvested for further processing or use;
• EN 17480:2021 - Algae and algae products - Methods for the determination of productivity of algae growth sites - helps determining the productivity of sites to artificially grow alagae.

The results of the work of the Technical Committee CEN/TC 454 Algae and algae products can also be easily followed up via our website genorma.com, following the link: https://genorma.com/en/project/search-by-committee/cen-tc-454