Can you really get gold and silver out of seaweed? It turns out, yes you can

BPH Global (ASX:BP8) – not to be confused with PEP-11 tragic BPH Energy – is currently providing an interesting offering to the ASX: It’s a company extracting precious metals from seaweeds cultivated in brackish and polluted waters.

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And perhaps more interesting than that prospect, is that it’s actually finding some.

According to BPH Global, “Assays from sample one of phase two seaweed grown… in Johor, Malaysia” returned gold assays of up to 123mg/kg and silver assays of 80.6mg/kg.

Both of these results were significantly higher than earlier assays seeking to extract precious metals from seaweed. To be fair, the prospect mightn’t be as left-of-field as it sounds. Seaweeds have been known to contain trace amounts of minerals for a good while now, but the issue is scaling up.

So this is very much an “early days” play – but seeing as seaweed grows for free, in the ocean, it’s not entirely irrational for BP8 Global to take a commercial interest.

(Helpfully, the company also sells seaweed into food markets across Asia. Seaweed snack foods are probably more easily familiar than thinking of seaweed as exploitable resources.)

But exploitable they are, which the company is demonstrating alongside Singaporean lab techs Temasek Innovation.

To be specific, the company is focusing on the species Sesuvium Portucalastrum, with samples being used by Temasek grown in waters “proximate to shipping lanes and industrial activity.”

That industrial activity could be, counterintuitively, a good thing for the seaweed samples, as far as BP8 is concerned. Heavy metals are known to be higher in sediment in waters used by industry, and seaweed absorbs trace elements from the waters around it.

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“The significantly higher concentrations of minerals, including gold and silver, found in the first assay results from Phase 2 of our R&D program represent an exciting milestone for the Company,” company chief Matthew Leonard said.

Testwork remains ongoing. A strange one, but worth watching.

BP8 last traded at a fourth of a cent.

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