Cancún Hosts 45 Nations at EU-Caribbean Summit on Sargassum

Cancún, Quintana Roo — After years of treating sargassum primarily as something to collect, haul away and dispose of, Mexico and its Caribbean neighbors are increasingly asking a different question: Can all that seaweed become a viable raw material?

That was at the center of the 4th EU-Caribbean Global Gateway Conference on Sargassum, held Oct. 1–2 in Cancún. The international gathering brought together representatives of 45 countries and territories, along with governments, researchers, businesses, financial institutions and international organizations.

The conference was co-organized by the European Union and Mexico through the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), in collaboration with the Quintana Roo government.

Its theme, “Shaping a Caribbean Sargassum Value Chain,” reflected a significant change in the conversation. Rather than concentrating solely on keeping sargassum off beaches, participants spent much of the two-day meeting looking at how collection, processing, manufacturing and financing could be connected into a regional industry.

2026 Has Already Broken Records

There is plenty of raw material to work with.

José Luis Samaniego Leyva, Mexico’s undersecretary for Sustainable Development and Circular Economy, said satellite monitoring detected nearly 35 million wet tons of floating sargassum in May 2026, roughly four times the 2025 level and 27 times the historical average.

Quintana Roo removed 92,782 tons during all of 2025, itself a record. By the beginning of October this year, more than 123,000 tons had already been removed, with the 2026 season not yet over.

Cancún alone has collected nearly 32,000 tons from its beaches this year, about 17,000 tons more than during the same period last year.

The consequences extend beyond messy beaches and the tourism industry’s considerable cleanup costs. As large quantities of sargassum decompose, they release hydrogen sulfide, the gas responsible for the familiar rotten-egg smell, as well as methane. Accumulations can also damage coastal ecosystems and affect nearby communities.

That is one reason Mexico’s strategy increasingly emphasizes intercepting sargassum at sea before it reaches shore.

Mexico Is Spending More Than 2 Billion Pesos

The federal government announced in July that it would invest more than 2 billion pesos in a significantly expanded sargassum response for Quintana Roo.

The first phase provides 768.7 million pesos to increase collection capacity from 1,227 tons to 1,870 tons per day.

Plans include two additional tugboats, six coastal sargassum vessels, more dynamic barriers and approximately 50 kilometers of coastal containment barriers. Playa del Carmen, Cancún, Tulum, Puerto Morelos and Mahahual are among the priority areas.

A second phase is intended to eventually raise collection capacity to about 4,000 tons per day.

But collecting more sargassum creates another problem: what to do with it afterward.

From Waste to Raw Material

That question is where the Cancún conference became particularly interesting.

SEMARNAT says it has identified 198 sargassum utilization initiatives in Mexico. Of those, 38 are already selling products and 11 are considered capable of scaling up.

Sargassum has been explored for uses ranging from construction materials and biofuels to agricultural products and other manufactured goods. The challenge has been moving beyond small projects and prototypes to businesses capable of consuming large, predictable quantities of the material.

Mexico has also changed the legal framework surrounding the seaweed. The federal government is moving toward treating collected sargassum as a usable resource rather than simply waste, allowing regulated harvesting and better tracking of the material from collection through processing.

That distinction matters if companies are expected to invest millions of pesos in facilities that depend on a reliable supply.

Puerto Morelos Could Become the Processing Hub

One of the biggest pieces of Mexico’s strategy is taking shape close to home.

In July, SEMARNAT formally established the Polo de Desarrollo de Economía Circular para el Bienestar de Quintana Roo, a nearly 40-hectare circular-economy development hub in Puerto Morelos along the Cancún-Playa del Carmen corridor.

According to SEMARNAT, the site is being designed to handle between 600 and 4,000 tons of sargassum per day.

Companies locating there will be eligible for incentives, including the ability to deduct 100% of qualifying investments in fixed assets.

The idea is to give businesses something previous sargassum projects have often lacked: a centralized location where large quantities of collected seaweed can be weighed, documented, processed and supplied to manufacturers with traceability.

In other words, instead of every hotel, municipality and entrepreneur trying to solve the problem independently, the government is attempting to build the infrastructure for an actual supply chain.

Europe Is Looking at 39 Investment Proposals

The European Union is also trying to move the conversation beyond research grants and pilot projects.

Myriam Ferrán, deputy director-general of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships, said 39 private-sector proposals from across the Caribbean are being evaluated as potential sargassum projects.

European participation includes possible support through research programs, grants, loans, guarantees and development financing.

The Cancún conference specifically focused on matching the supply of collected sargassum with industrial demand and determining how promising projects can attract enough financing to operate commercially.

That is a considerably harder problem than finding possible uses for the seaweed. A product can work in a laboratory without being economical to manufacture at the scale required to consume thousands of tons of sargassum.

Four Problems Still Need to Be Solved

SEMARNAT identified four issues that countries around the Caribbean cannot easily solve independently.

The first is better forecasting so governments and businesses know when and where major sargassum arrivals are coming. The second is establishing common quality standards for the collected material. The third is creating the processing and logistics infrastructure between collection and manufacturing. The fourth is securing financing large enough to move successful projects beyond the experimental stage.

Those issues help explain why the European Union, Caribbean governments, development banks and private investors were all represented in Cancún.

The conference program devoted its first day largely to projects and potential markets. The second concentrated on financing, infrastructure, investment frameworks and how a regional sargassum economy might actually function.

What This Could Mean for the Riviera Maya

For residents and businesses along the Riviera Maya, none of this means the annual sargassum problem is about to disappear.

Even with additional boats and barriers, the quantities arriving in the Caribbean are enormous, and Mexico’s expanded collection system and Puerto Morelos processing hub are still being developed.

But the strategy is becoming more concrete.

Mexico is investing in equipment to capture more sargassum before it reaches shore, creating rules for handling it as a usable resource, building a dedicated processing center and looking for companies capable of buying and transforming it on an industrial scale.

For years, the question each sargassum season has been how much will arrive and who will clean it up.

The conversation in Cancún suggests the next question may be just as important: Who can actually use it?