Our Team
MBL brings both experience and youth to the marine biopolymers area, and it was founded, and is led, by two highly experienced executives with a strong record in innovation and development.
In addition, our chairman is also a highly respected and experienced figure in the IB sphere, including in natural polymers and alginate.
Collectively, our seaweed and alginate experience, including expert advisers we can call on in different areas, from seaweed supply to customer applications, amounts to 100 years and more.
Youth also features, and MBL has augmented its original duo with young graduates who are playing their part in taking the company forward in different areas.
Douglas Macinnes
Douglas is one of the two founding directors of MBL and he has been the key technical driver of MBL’s new alginate process from concept to pilot scale, and will lead the development of the full scale plant. He has over 20 years’ previous experience within alginate production, but has augmented his skillset in project management, supply chain management and lean manufacturing.
David Mackie
David is the other founding member of MBL and brings a wealth of experience from the chemicals and other industries, including forest products, and has been involved in both business turnarounds and start-ups of different scale. His skillset is primarily in sales and marketing and his MBL role is primarily focused on the customer end of the business, including technical development.
Sandy Dobbie
Sandy was appointed Chairman of MBL at the beginning of 2013. He has extensive industry experience, including having been CEO of a leading alginate company for several years. He is a past Chairman of Chemical Sciences Scotland and a current/former Chairman/NXD of several chemical and biotechnology companies (Evolva, Warwick Chemicals, Synthomer, Synthace).
Kirsty Black
Kirsty joined MBL in 2013 and is a graduate (Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde) in the bio-medical area. She provides technical support in alginate product development and evaluation and has a lead role in MBL’s development of other seaweed components, including MBL’s involvement in an EU sponsored project called SeaBioTech
Marianne O’Byrne
With degrees in Microbiology and Industrial Biotechnology from Strathclyde University, Marianne joined MBL in mid-2015; her responsibilities lie mainly in product development and quality, in both a chemical and microbiological sense.
Audrey Jaszewski
Audrey joined MBL in 2014 and came with lengthy experience in the Alginate business. Apart from making sure that admin matters are properly looked after, she spends her time on product quality and quality systems aspects.
Ruaraidh Park
With a degree in Chemical Engineering from Strathclyde University, Ruaraidh joined MBL in mid-2014; his efforts are largely focused on process design, process and energy optimisation, and process scale-up.
