At Cascadia Seaweed, we cultivate local species of seaweed and manufacture products for crop and cattle farmers.
Cascadia Seaweed is One of Victoria’s 10 to Watch Businesses Award Winners
This article is from the April /May 2020 issue of Douglas Magazine and can be read online here.
Each year Douglas Magazine, Vancouver Island’s premier business magazine, highlights 10 up-and-coming local businesses for their innovation and entrepreneurship. One of this year’s winners is Sidney based Cascadia Seaweed.
“We celebrate each of these entrepreneurial 10 to Watch winners for their innovative ideas and ambition to change the world,” says Lise Gyorkos, co-owner of Page One Publishing, which produces Douglas magazine. “A 10 to Watch Award is a strong endorsement from local experts — and recognizes that these businesses demonstrate sound business models, scalability, talent and great market potential.”
This is the second award Cascadia Seaweed has been recognized for within its first year of operations, the other being the Vancouver Island Ocean Products of the Year Award presented by the Business Examiner. “It’s an honour for our company to be highlighted among these remarkable business leaders” says Mike Williamson, President and CEO of Cascadia Seaweed. “We look forward to following their successes,” he continued.
Cascadia Seaweed is a whole food and ingredients company, growing to be the largest provider of cultivated seaweed in North America. They are bridging the gap between agriculture and aquaculture by sustainably farming seaweed with a fast growing crop that only requires sunlight and salt water to grow. They partner with coastal and First Nations communities to gain access to water tenures and secure labour for the processes of installing farm infrastructure, seeding and harvesting, and they are a partner in the Port Alberni Food Hub processing facility. They intend to grow over a thousand hectares in water with sugar kelp, alaria, dulse and other species for the human food, bio-packaging and industrial sectors.
The three-year project is funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and implemented by Plan International Canada (Plan) in partnership with Cascadia Seaweed, the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, and Kenyan experts.
Cascadia Seaweed, the leading ocean cultivator of brown seaweeds in Canada, is pleased to announce the successful completion of its recent harvest season which exceeded biomass predictions.
Seaweed’s greatest potential to be both commercially successful and environmentally positive is using it as a biostimulant in order to increase terrestrial crops yields, while reducing the traditional agriculture sector’s reliance on chemical fertlisers, rather than as a means of sequestering blue carbon.
Greater Victoria gears up to welcome an impressive gathering of industry experts, academics, Indigenous Peoples and students at the highly anticipated 25th International Seaweed Symposium from May 4 - 9, 2025.
Cascadia Seaweed Accelerates the Commercialization of Large-scale Agrifeed and Biostimulant Products with funding from the BC Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy
Regenerative and restorative aquaculture operations, such as seaweed farms, can be economically – as well as ecologically – sound, according to two of the key players in the space.