Caledonian Seaweeds
Capability | Cultivation | Conservation | Community
... creating a thriving and sustainable Scottish Seaweed Sector!
A new Company
Caledonian Seaweeds Ltd. (CalSea) was created to develop and manage sustainable, naturally produced seaweed farmed and harvested off the Scottish coast.
CalSea operates seaweed aquaculture farms, on the scenic (and perfect for seaweed) coastal waters of west Scotland.
A new Foundation
A new business model, where the CalSea Foundation ™ operates ‘Partner-Farmer owned’ seaweed farms, centrally pulling its resources and co-investing in the farm construction, maintenance and management; CalSea also provides a collective / co-operative sales & marketing resource and support for all its Partner-Farmers.
A new Sector
It doesn’t stop with just setting up a company or a single farm; CalSea has ambitious plans to create an entire Scottish seaweed sector.
Our ‘Foundation’ structure and operation allows a full roll-out and scaling-up to create a sizeable cluster of seaweed producing farms, with huge opportunities for various forms of added-value processing.
CalSea – the company
Caledonian Seaweeds (CalSea) is an ambitious Scottish company, set up in 2019 from Slate Islands Seaweed Ltd, to focus on farming our amazing seaweed resource.
Goals & Objectives
- To deliver an ethical, natural, sustainable response to the gaping hole in the UK’s low performance within this sector
- To service the major markets demanding a local supplier – the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, biofuel, food and animal feed sectors.
- To create jobs and new opportunities, ambition and optimism within coastal communities
Values
- To position seaweed farming within Scotland’s increasing profile as a forward-thinking and climate-change focused nation
- To focus on rural and coastal communities often neglected or lacking ownership on their own doorstep
- To provide the people of Scotland with a forward thinking legacy for this and future generations
- To supply a major, and growing, market for seaweed products – raw and refined
- To realise the huge opportunity within Scotland, thanks to location and coastal ecology
- To offer options for business, employment, training, social, economic and environmental rewards
- To create an actual new sector
- To service markets in Europe and around the world seeking better and renewable sources for raw organic produce
- To address Scotland’s carbon footprint with a new seaweed solution
CalSea are here to make this happen; we most certainly have big ideas and ambitions, we hope you share them too!
CalSea – the Foundation
Our plans for growth are based on our developing a ‘Foundation’ model.
Instead of simply relying on organic growth, CalSea is increasing the seaweed farming and productive capacity in a way that allows us to scale up, carefully, and with Partner-Farmers.
The growing, hungry, market requirement for this wonderful natural product is immense – with our Partner-Farmers and their innovative partnership with CalSea, risk is reduced for all parties, output optimised and profits maximised.
CalSea acts as a ‘the hub of the wheel’, establishing the new Partner-Farms, and the Partner-Farmer commits to managing the farm on a daily basis. Through clustering these farms, together, a new and exciting Scottish seaweed sector will be created.
CalSea – Sector
The cluster-sector approach is focused around the CalSea company, as the heart of the Foundation model, which creates and sustains an entire Sector.
Ambitious indeed; but the need is apparent for a sustainable, green, clean and life-enhancing natural product and production capability – global markets, companies and customers are now turning to seaweed as a primary rich resource. This demand extends from simple foodstuffs to refined pharmaceuticals. It doesn’t come any more ecologically friendly, and sustainable, as seaweed.
We are indeed ambitious; with our Partner-Farm model, we will provide a centre of excellence as the hub for the coastal Partner-Farms, developing ever-better methods, technologies, strains of seaweed and working models that build and sustain a thriving Scottish Seaweed industry. This will result not only in growing and harvesting sustainable crop, but in the many added-value options to process seaweed for the table, natural biochemical industries, ‘nutraceutical’ and premium refined product.
Don’t just take our word for it!
“Further expansion of seaweed aquaculture and the development of novel demands for this crop will continue to fuel the growth of this emerging blue industry”.
Mazarrasa et al., 2014
“Because of very low investment required to set up seaweed aquaculture farms, seaweed aquaculture is a particularly sound strategy for coastal nations to contribute to climate change mitigation while protecting their shoreline and marine ecosystems from some of the effects of climate change”.
Frontiers
“It is absolutely imperative we protect our kelp forests; they provide a vital habitat for a wide array of species and to take the necessary action to preserve the marine habitats”.
Sir David Attenborough
“No seeds are needed; it’s like rice: you throw in five pounds of seaweed and in a week, you got 10 pounds. It’s a pretty awesome story”..
Mike Graham, Director of Aquaculture,
Californian State University Moss Landing Marine Laboratory
“Seaweed production is big business; China & Indonesia produce over 23 million tons pa, countries diverse as Chile, Canada, Norway currently produce thousands of tons”.
World Aquaculture Society
“There is huge potential for commercial seaweed farming in the UK………the UK is on the tipping point of becoming a seaweed farming nation”.
The Food Business
Contact us now
Tel: (44) 7973 710 427 / Email: HQ@caledonianseaweeds.com