Irish Moss

Irish moss kept thousands alive during the Irish famine - a nutritious seaweed gathered from rocky shores when other food failed. Today it's the source of carrageenan, used to thicken everything from ice cream to toothpaste. Global carrageenan production exceeds 60,000 tons annually, a multi-billion dollar industry.

Irish moss demonstrates famine food to industrial commodity. What began as desperate survival nutrition became a mainstream ingredient through process innovation. The business parallel is products that begin in extreme or marginal use cases, then expand into mainstream applications as production and processing improve.