100 tons of sea lettuce and seaweed have been harvested outside Grebbestad in recent weeks.
Now the company wants to establish itself in the European market, but at the same time there is concern that the seaweed will absorb dangerous substances from the water around it.
– Seaweed farming requires very few resources. They grow here with only sunlight and the nutrients that are already in the sea, so it is very sustainable, says Jonatan Gerrbo, seaweed farmer.
Seaweed may bring to mind slimy tentacles entwining around the foot during a summer bath, rather than something to serve for dinner.
That is the attitude that Jonathan Gerrbo, sales manager at Nordic Seafarm, wants to change.
– We want to get the seaweed out on as many plates as possible so people can taste and see what it is, he says.
Sweden’s largest cultivation
Seaweed is a collective name for macroalgae, the largest type of algae. This includes the lime green sea lettuce and the cola brown seaweed, which are the two that Nordic Seafarm mainly grows.
Both grow naturally in Swedish waters but can also be cultivated. Then the plants begin their life in a lab, and are then placed on long ropes moored to buoys that float some distance out to sea.
Nordic Seafarm is not Sweden’s only seaweed farm, but it is the largest. Outside Grebbestad on the west coast, the size of the plantation corresponds to 16 football pitches.
– This is the start of something big. We want to take the step into Europe and build a seaweed industry, says Jonatan Gerrbo.
More areas of use
In the future, algae could serve multiple purposes. It could, for example, be used to make bioplastics, cosmetics or animal feed. And maybe to clean up the oceans.
During the spring, the University of Gothenburg organized courses where they showed the participants how algae and other things from the sea can be used in cooking, with their own colony plot in the port of Gothenburg.
There, the conditions have proven to be poor for growing seaweed as food, but Maria Bodin, project manager at the University of Gothenburg, sees another benefit.
– The algae take up both nitrogen and phosphorus, so when you harvest the algae, you take those substances out of the water. Having algae to clean might be a variant, she says.
Conflict between different areas of use
But the fact that the algae take up substances in their surroundings can be a double-edged sword, if they are also to serve as food.
– It depends entirely on where it is harvested, it is very important that you pick in a place with good water. More research is needed, we need to find out those things before we start a giant industry.
Nordic Seafarm says that algae can very well contain harmful substances, but that it has chosen to focus its cultivation on seaweed varieties that do not absorb substances to the same degree, and that it continuously tests its seaweed to ensure that it is below the Norwegian Food Agency’s limit values.