We are a growing company.
Cascadia Seaweed is growing to be one of the largest providers of ocean cultivated seaweed, a climate-positive crop with a variety of uses requiring only the sea and sunlight to grow. Seaweed requires no freshwater, fertilizers, pesticides or arable land to grow. It sequesters more carbon than land plants, creates habitat, is renewable and fast growing. In addition, seaweed has a diversity of uses and a long list of healthy nutrients — including the essential vitamin B12.
In our first year of business we produced seed, built farms, planted, grew and harvested from 2 hectares of demonstration farms, signed partnerships with First Nations, completed a land-based trial. Our first commercial crop was harvested in the Spring of 2021. We now have 25 hecatares under cultivation across 8 farm sites in 5 geographic areas, and recently completed a harvest of
50 wet tonnes (or 50,000 kg) of seaweed, a combination of
Saccharina latissima and
Alaria marginata.
To reach our goals, we work with First Nations and coastal communities to embrace their wisdom, workforce, coastal infrastructure and social license. En-route we rejuvenate our abundant natural resources to provide a long-term future for this new and burgeoning sector. And, unlike many other industrial sectors, our business does more to improve the health of our planet the more we grow.
Processing facility
We are partners in the Port Alberni Food Hub,
The Dock+, a processing facility for the food and beverage industry with specialized equipment, new technology and research facilities. We are working on outfitting a space to undertake primary processing at this facility. In the meantime we have been partnering with existing processing centres, such as Walcan on Quadra Island and Hub City Fisheries in Nanaimo.
Nursery
The availability of seed for cultivation is vital to our success.
Read the story
about how we designed and built a nursery to produce a variety of species of seed-stock for our ocean operations.
Partnerships.
We offer flexible business models for our community partners to meet their interest, capacity and goals. All models include a custom partnership agreement and rely on two-way dialogue and a mutually beneficial outcome. The expressions of interest have been extensive.
Take a moment to watch a recent video we produced about Embracing Indigenous Wisdom.
British Columbia has the best fertile waters for seaweed farming.
Our farms are located in bays and inlets in the Pacific Ocean along the coast of British Columbia in Canada. There are over 20,000 km of coastline here, featuring pristine water conditions, a favourable regulatory environment, support of coastal communities and an abundance of suitable existing tenures.
As one of Canada’s strategic locations for international trade, Vancouver Island is positioned for to access foreign markets and national distribution channels.
Our Process of Cultivating Seaweed.
The process of commercially farming seaweed involves attaching seedlings onto a rope that is strung between vertical lines drawn taught by an anchor and a float. The rope is deployed into the open ocean where the seaweed grows until it attains a size ready for harvest. The seaweed laden rope is brought onto a boat where the plant is cut from the rope, delivered to shore, processed and produced into our Kove Ocean Foods products.
