The tide could be turning for Britain's kelp farmers

Caroline Warwick-Evans, a renewable energy engineer, and conservationist Tim van Berkel are the founders of the Cornish Seaweed Company.

The partners were working in Cornwall as a cleaner and waiter, when they saw an opportunity to create a new local industry in the South West; harvesting and processing seaweeds.

“I had heard about the seaweed industry in Scotland and Ireland and wanted to see if we have the same resources here in Cornwall,” Warwick-Evans said.

“We went to an Irish seaweed harvesting company on work experience, learning as much as we could about seaweed and how to grow and process it before bringing the knowledge back home. The industry was so new here that there was no code of conduct in place and no legal framework around harvesting seaweed so we had to apply for an experimental licence from the Crown Estate.

“We worked with Natural England and the Port Health Authority to establish guidelines and are developing research projects with the University of Exeter to ensure sustainable harvesting techniques.”

Since then, The Cornish Seaweed Company has been awarded a series of EU and private grants and sells its products to wholefood shops and restaurants around the UK.

They currently employ six people and are looking for an injection of investment, to help the business scale. “We’ve got our processes in place and we have a growing customer base so we are ready to boom. We just need an injection to take us to the next level,” said Warwick-Evans.

“We are paving the way to establish a sustainable industry in the South West and hoping seaweed will end up on everyone’s plate.”

On a similar mission to establish a place for seaweed in the mind of the consumer are Dawn Hourigan and Ruth Dronfield, founders of seaweed start-up, Atlantic Kitchen.

Hourigan grew up eating seaweed regularly in Cork, Ireland, and was surprised at the lack of seaweed eaten in London, so partnered up with events planner Dronfield to fill a gap in the market. They had immediate success supplying London-based chefs including Bruno Loubet, Sam Clark from Moro and Yotam Ottolenghi, but struggled to win over the consumer.

“We immediately faced a hurdle,” says Dronfield.

“Seaweed has not been eaten and cooked for centuries in the West so people don’t know what to do with it. The way we see it, we’re trying to launch a brand new product into the market. We needed to overcome that education hurdle before gaining any success in the retail sector.”

Dronfield decided it was “necessary to build a bridge in the customers mind, to using dried seaweed as an ingredient” and listed the company on the crowd-funding website, Crowdcube in order to fund the development of its first range of soups. Within two months they had raised £125,000 and the soups are set to launch soon.

Public interest in seaweed is rising and a recent survey estimates that chefs in seven out of ten of the world’s top restaurants are already using seaweed. These include Noma in Copenhagen, currently voted the world’s best restaurant, whilst chefs Heston Blumenthal and Aldo Zilli are vocal advocates.

Mark Poynton, chef patron at Michelin-starred Alimentum in Cambridge, regularly features seaweed in his cooking. Seaweed is a particularly nutritious addition to the British diet, containing more fibre than prunes or bananas, more calcium than cheese, and more iron than a sirloin steak.

However, seaweed harvesting is not regulated in the UK and the first official licence to collect and sell it as food commercially was issued in 2012.

For Kate Burns and her son Benji McFaul, a fourth generation Irish fisherman, this nascent industry marks an opportunity to diversify coastal economies.

They founded Islander Kelp in 2013, based on Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland, where both grew up and now run a laboratory and seaweed farm.

“We spent our first year on R&D, learning new things about seaweed everyday, working out how to process it and which types would be best to grow.”

They wanted to create a business that would provide diversification and innovate the marine industry at a local level, so now train and employ local islanders as lab technicians.

Islander Kelp is currently one of 27 Northern Irish business start-ups on the Invest NI Propel programme, which helps fast-track export focussed high-growth businesses.

Burns aims to produce at least 40 tonnes of processed product per year but is currently focussed on supplying the commercial sector, targeting restaurants rather than retail.

“Kelp is growing in popularity with both chefs and consumers, however the majority of people still think of it as an Asian ingredient.

“We still import from Asia, which is madness when really top quality sea veg is growing on our doorstep.”

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