A worker putting out seeded lines of Ulva at one of Nordic Seafarm’s sites
Although kelp is currently the best species to grow from an environmental viewpoint, Johansson believes the company should produce more Ulva, Palmaria and Gracilaria so they can develop a wider range of offerings
© Nordic Seafarm
Applications
While Nordic has primarily focused on the food sector so far, Johannsen sees opportunities elsewhere too.
“Seaweed is a versatile crop which can be used for many things – biomaterials, animal feeds, biostimulants – so we’re exploring what the next steps should be. We’ve had proposals from those segments and are evaluating which ones to double down on, but it takes a lot to penetrate new market segments,” Johansson explains.
Most of their business is currently done in Sweden, while the rest of Scandinavia and northern Europe also account for significant proportions of their 60 or so customers.
Challenges
Johansson believes there’s still much work to be done – especially in terms of product development and growing the market.
“We have the challenge of expanding from high end restaurants into wider food service markets and also retail products and into other European countries. We had over 60 paying customers this year, but we can still produce more seaweed than we can sell,” he notes.
However, there is also an argument for increasing production given that one or two major food companies have approached Nordic Seafarm.
“We are in some interesting dialogues with large actors in the food sector, who see us as currently being too small to fulfill their orders,” Johansson explains.
Meanwhile, from a farming perspective he notes that there’s room for improvement in terms of “optimising yields, reducing the cost of production, scaling up and in a cost-efficient way and having more automated harvesting processes”.
Funding
According to Johansson the company has so far been funded through a combination of grants, €3-4 million worth of investment from shareholders – including the Stena family, best known for their ferries – and revenues from the sales of its products. “Although from modest levels, we’ve doubled sales every year since 2020 but still need to scale a bit more and we are currently in the middle of raising a round of €2.5 million. We now have one lead investor covering around €1 million so we’re on track and aim to close it by the end of February,” he explains.
The evolution of the industry
Looking ahead Johansson believes that product development should be one of the key areas for the sector to focus on, and that there’s huge scope to investigate farming a greater range of species too.
“I think kelp is currently the best species to grow from an environmental viewpoint: it absorbs a lot of CO2 equivalents and produces good yields, but it has its limitations, such as its high iodine content, so I think we should develop more Ulva, more Palmaria and more Gracilaria so we can develop a wider range of offerings for even more end uses in the market,” he argues.
Our mapping shows that there’s scope to grow at least 10,000 tonnes of seaweed in nearshore locations on Sweden’s west coast
Simon Johansson, CEO of Nordic Seafarm
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Meanwhile, in terms of the evolution of the company itself?
“Hopefully in 5-10 years time we’ll be the biggest seaweed cultivator in Europe, working with larger actors with an even more upstream focus – growing a lot of seaweed in the ocean is how we can have the greatest impact and do the ocean a favour,” Johansson explains.
And it seems like the Swedish authorities are taking an enlightened approach to macroalgal aquaculture.
“In Sweden the legislation is good for those businesses that are good for the environment – regulators say ‘no’ to fish farms but ‘yes’ to seaweed farms and our mapping shows that there’s scope to grow at least 10,000 tonnes of seaweed in nearshore locations on Sweden’s west coast. There’s plenty of room to grow in a safe and good way before we need to go to new places or new countries,” Johansson concludes.
Source link : https://thefishsite.com/articles/insights-from-swedens-number-one-seaweed-farm
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Publish date : 2024-01-24 08:00:00
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