Seaweed farms for fishermen on the west coast

After taking over an algae cultivation from Nordic SeaFarm, KOASTAL then set up their own farm in 2022. Since then the company has started up four new cultivations 

where fishermen and other sea enthusiasts are running the farm independently, taking care of operations such as preparation, seeding and monitoring until the harvest. KOASTAL themselves offers services as marketing and securing a buyer, provides training and seaweed sprouts to the farmers, rents out necessary equipment, selects and evaluates cultivation sites and manages the permit process. This is because they want to create a more efficient production system and also help fishermen create a more diverse income. 

The income is mainly based on cultivation of sugar kelp but also the green algae sea lettuce together with Nordic SeaFarm. It is under investigation whether the red algae Dulse could be cultivated with a profit in the future. 

– We are going to have a couple of hundred meters of lines, it is going to be experimental so we'll just see what happens. 

What will you use the seaweed for?

– Now we are selling it to companies producing great food products but we are also looking into if we can in the future sell it as animal feed and if we can extract specific components such as hydrocolloids.

If everything goes well they have hopes of growing 20 tonnes of sugar kelp and around one tonnes of sea lettuce, based on the yields from 2022. 

– It is still a very small scale if you compare it to some guys in the US, Norway, Denmark and the Faroe Islands, but it is a good start. 

Firstly, the focus will however be on already existing cultivations.

– We really need to hold ourselves down of trying to jump into all that potential. 

Text: Kajsa Centre

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