On the Record: Maine startup aims to fight plastic pollution with kelp

Alexa McGovern of Dirigo Sea Farm in her laboratory.

PHOTO / JIM NEUGER Alexa McGovern, founder of Dirigo Sea Farm, in her lab at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. She is holding a bundle of rockweed in her left hand, which is used to create the bioplastic film she is holding in her right hand.

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By Renee Cordes

Alexa McGovern is the founder of Dirigo Sea Farm, an early-stage startup that aims to fight plastic pollution by turning kelp into biodegradable bioplastic film for use in products such as dishwasher and laundry pods. She grew up in Falmouth and moved back to Maine last year to participate in the year-long Founder Residency program at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute in Portland. After hearing her pitch during Startup Maine Week, Mainebiz sat down with the 31-year-old in her basement lab at the University of Southern Maine to get the lowdown.

Mainebiz: What did you do before starting this business?

Alexa McGovern: I was in software development for the past six years, working in an e-commerce software company down in the Boston area. I had various roles from customer-facing to product management. Prior to that I worked at a winery in sales and marketing. My main focus was always in consumer packaged goods.

MB: What prompted you to start Dirigo Sea Farm?

AM: I had read about seaweed farming probably five or six years ago on a plane, and I became obsessed with it. But I don’t drive a boat and I don’t have a biology degree, so I told myself I’d sit on the sidelines and watch it hopefully take off as a growing part of Maine’s sea economy. Fast forward to 2023, when I had my daughter and was diagnosed with breast cancer. Both of those experiences were eye-opening for me in relation to our toxin exposure from a human health perspective. I had this really personal drive to try to figure out how to fix that. I also was hearing that the seaweed economy was taking off like I had hoped, and they actually were growing too much seaweed. I started Dirigo Sea Farm at the end of 2023 with a plan to create a value-added end product that can absorb a ton of seaweed volume. We want to be an “off-taker.”

MB: Where do you get your seaweed from?

AM: I have a small farm in Kittery, but I get most of our bulk supply from Atlantic Sea Farms, which is sourcing from all over Maine to get us dried seaweed.

MB: What are the benefits of bioplastic?

AM: Essentially, we’re adding organic compounds to an already organic compound, so that degrading is not turning into something harmful that’s then circulating in water.

MB: How have you funded the business so far?

AM: We’ve raised $150,000 from grants.

MB: What can you share about your first customer?

AM: It is a chemicals manufacturer that does detergent creation and packaging for brand manufacturers, and that has been investing in an eco-friendly janitorial sanitation line for a long time. They’ve had customers come to them and say they want to get into the laundry and dishwasher pod market, but it’s all plastic and they don’t want to do that. The company reached out to us and it’s been a really organic partnership.

MB: What are your plans for scaling your business?

AM: Right now, we’re working on fulfilling the order of our first customer by the end of the year. We would then hopefully step into a larger space where we can actually bio-refine larger amounts of seaweed and have a warehouse. Once we get to that size, we can probably pretty easily scale to having a handful more customers.

MB: Do you see other applications for your product beyond pods?

AM: We’d love to move into coatings of packaging, so things like linings and different containers. Eventually, we’ll hopefully get into rigid plastic.

MB: What’s it like being a first-time entrepreneur?

AM: When it’s super hard and I am wondering what we’re doing, I am still so thankful that I’m doing this. I find real alignment with my work right now, which I’m grateful for. And I get to work with incredibly bright people whom I learn so much from every day.

MB: And the challenging part?

AM: There’s the non-glamorous parts of being a small team and having to wear every hat from admin to CFO to legal, I am still not paying myself and all these elements that are stressful. But we’re putting together a plan of being able to get to certain milestones that keep us chugging along during those hard times.