A concrete plant that uses sargassum as a key input is set to open near Tulum, according to David Jáuregui, a partner at Grupo Dakatso and the executive responsible for the facility. The plant, located on the Tulum-Playa del Carmen highway, will produce up to 400 cubic meters of sargacreto per day and operate a fleet of 15 trucks to serve both public and private construction projects.
The announcement adds a local industrial dimension to a crisis that has defined the Caribbean coastline for over a decade. Rather than treating sargassum purely as waste, Grupo Dakatso is positioning its product as a construction material with commercial scale, environmental certification, and a concrete pitch to municipal planners.
A proposal for Tulum's Avenida 7 Sur
Jáuregui told La Jornada that the company has already submitted a proposal to use sargacreto in the repaving of Avenida 7 Sur, a thoroughfare that local officials have suggested could become a commercial corridor comparable to Playa del Carmen's Quinta Avenida. Under that proposal, the project could absorb as much as 1,800 tons of sargassum through Dakatso's technology.
"The project will be very positive for Tulum," Jáuregui said. "We have presented a proposal to use sargacreto on that road, where up to 1,800 tons of sargassum could be utilized through our technology."
No contract or formal municipal commitment has been announced. The repaving of Avenida 7 Sur was referenced by officials as a planned project, and Dakatso's bid appears to be one proposal among others that could be considered.
Sargacreto is already deployed in Campeche
The material is not experimental. Grupo Dakatso has already installed sargacreto at the Campeche train station, a project Jáuregui cited as a public reference point. "The entire exterior floor of that station is made of sargacreto. It is a work that anyone can visit and verify," he said.
The product costs roughly 10% more than conventional concrete, a premium the company attributes to its environmental processing and the logistics of sargassum collection. To offset that cost differential in commercial negotiations, Dakatso has partnered with organizations linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which allows the company to issue certificates quantifying the positive environmental impact generated by each project that uses the material.
The scale of the sargassum problem
The context for this kind of industrial solution is significant. Ignacio Muñoz, CEO of The Seas We Love, has noted that since 2011, a combination of oceanic and atmospheric factors has driven the formation of a sargassum belt spanning nearly 6,000 miles between Africa and Brazil. That belt pushes millions of tons of algae into Caribbean currents each season, and a meaningful portion eventually washes onto the shores of Quintana Roo.
Muñoz has argued that any durable strategy must address the problem at sea, not only on the beach. "The problem reaches us from the sea, and it is at sea where we must begin to find the solution," he said.
Dakatso's approach operates further down the chain, converting sargassum that has already arrived onshore into a usable product. At full capacity, the Tulum plant's 400 cubic meters per day would represent a meaningful volume of material diverted from coastal disposal, though the scale of annual arrivals in Quintana Roo far exceeds what any single plant could process.
Sargacreto's place in the local response
The Tulum plant enters a landscape where sargassum management has long been reactive and fragmented. Municipal cleanup operations, federal coordination through the Navy, and private beach-clearing contracts have all struggled to keep pace with seasonal arrivals. Industrial conversion projects like Dakatso's represent a different model: treating the algae as a feedstock rather than a disposal problem.
Whether Tulum's construction sector adopts sargacreto at a meaningful scale will depend on procurement decisions, pricing negotiations, and whether municipal authorities move forward on projects like Avenida 7 Sur. The 10% cost premium is not trivial for large public works budgets, and the company's UN-linked environmental certificates may matter more to private developers with sustainability commitments than to municipal contracting offices operating under cost constraints.
No opening date for the Tulum plant has been confirmed publicly. Jáuregui's statements were reported by La Jornada, and Grupo Dakatso has not published an official timeline.
Would you consider sargacreto a viable solution for Tulum's coastal crisis, or does the real fix need to start further out at sea? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.