Cold Current Kelp

Cold Current Kelp is a southern Maine skincare company built around one ingredient most beauty brands only borrow for the label: kelp the founders grow themselves. Krista Rosen and Dr. Inga Potter started the company in 2021, farming sugar kelp in Maine waters and using it to develop facial oils and other kelp-based personal-care products.

The ownership record is solid. Cold Current's own farm page names Inga Potter and Krista Rosen as co-founders and says the company is women-owned. The Maine Made profile introduces Krista and Inga as co-founders, with Inga's marine-biology background and Krista's legal and climate-advocacy background. Mainebiz and The Fish Site both report that Rosen and Potter founded the company in 2021. We found no acquisition record, corporate parent, or exclusion-list match.

This is not a white-label skincare line with a coastal mood board. Cold Current grows kelp, harvests it, dries it, and works on extraction methods for skincare use. The Fish Site reported a $175,000 USDA grant supporting research into kelp extracts for non-food applications, including green extraction methods that avoid toxic solvents. That kind of detail matters. Ingredient stories are easy to fake; permitted farms, named founders, and research partnerships are harder.

The current product focus is narrow: kelp-powered facial oil and related skincare routines. The brand frames kelp as a source of bioactive compounds, antioxidants, and skin-supportive nutrients. As always with skincare, the right answer is patch testing and reading the full ingredient list. "Natural" does not automatically mean irritation-free.

Cold Current earns its place because the supply chain is unusually close to the makers. The people growing the kelp are the people building the formula. That gives shoppers something useful to evaluate: not just what is in the bottle, but who put it there, where it came from, and how much of the process stays in Maine.

Products

• KelpGlow facial oil
• Kelp-based skincare routines
• Regenerative kelp-farm education
• Research-backed kelp extract development

Why We List Them

• Founded by Krista Rosen and Dr. Inga Potter in Maine in 2021
• Women-owned company verified through company, Maine Made, and press sources
• Grows, harvests, dries, and formulates with Maine kelp
• Uses green extraction research for non-toxic skincare ingredients
• No corporate parent or acquisition record found