December 31, 2023
Happy New Year's Eve! We're excited to bring you this year-end wrap-up and business update as we get ready for an exciting 2024!
Permitting Update
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After several months of review from numerous state and federal agencies, we're excited to announce that our kelp farm lease has been tentatively approved!
Our application is now in the final phase of the permitting process and we hope to receive our finalized lease in the first quarter of 2024! We want to thank all of the great state and federal employees who helped us get to this point, as well as everyone who wrote in with letters of support for our lease!
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Year-End Review
As 2023 comes to a close, we want to look back at a few highlights from our first year as Pacific Kelp Co.!
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Winter 2023
We started the year with the big decision to leave our careers and work on building Pacific Kelp Co. full time!
In February, we set off to Alaska to find the ideal site to grow our kelp. Our journey began in Juneau at the annual Alaskan Mariculture Conference, where we received hard-earned advice from industry professionals on site-selection best practices. We then headed to Ketchikan, the homebase of our future operations, to conduct a dozen site-visits and collect hundreds of data points in an effort to find the perfect farm site.
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Spring 2023
Next, we set sail for California to research kelp forests and collect samples for product development. We spent days snorkeling and scuba diving off the coast of California, exploring kelp beds, making observations and collecting samples - what a changeup from our old office jobs!
We successfully developed a "garage-scale" processing line for drying and milling our kelp to a fine powder, which we later sent to prospective customers who loved our samples! In addition, following a lot of data-crunching and consultation with industry experts, we finalized our farm-site location and applied for our kelp farm lease - the timing of which auspiciously coincided with Earth Day!
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Summer 2023
To kick off the summer, we spent the longest day of the year in Trondheim, Norway at Seagriculture Europe, where we had a chance to meet and learn from dozens of kelp farmers and processors. We are excited to apply some of the best practices from Europe on our Alaskan Giant Kelp farm!
In July, we spent more time on our future farm site installing sensors that measure current speed and direction. After about 40 days of data collection we successfully retrieved the sensors and extracted the valuable data. This data is being used by our engineering partners to more accurately size and design our kelp growing array - helping us to optimize our kelp growth and reduce our total costs!
We also had the opportunity to monitor the wild kelp beds near our farm site - which were abundant and healthy. That's a great sign, as we will use those wild kelp beds as the broodstock for our future crops.
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Fall 2023
In September we attended exciting sessions on seaweed farming at Climate Week 2023 in New York City.
At an event co-hosted by the World Wildlife Foundation, panelists discussed some of the many reasons why they support the growth of the seaweed farming industry. Panelists described how seaweed farming can create habitats for marine life and how growing seaweed can aid in the sequestration of excess nutrients and carbon dioxide from the ocean, something that can help prevent damaging ocean acidification!
Later in the fall we attended Supply Side West, one of the largest food and ingredient conferences in the world to market our kelp to food and nutraceutical companies. We received a great deal of interest in our Alaskan Giant Kelp and look forward to making our first sales to customers in 2024!
We were also hard at work in the lab this fall experimenting with various kelp product formats, leveraging the samples we collected earlier in the year. One of our successes was the development of a liquid extract from our Alaskan Giant Kelp. Our process yielded a liquid kelp extract that showed significant benefits to plant health and robustness when tested against a control. We look forward to scaling up our process in 2024 and producing large quantities of liquid kelp extract for our customers!
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A Sneak Peak into 2024!
It's humbling to reflect on the past year and all that we have accomplished - but also energizing as we head into the New Year!
We're excited to hit the ground running and start growing and processing kelp! We plan on building and seeding our farm in the first half of the year, and expect to build out our processing hub and make our first deliveries to customers in the second half of the year.
Click here to make sure you're signed up for our emails - 2024 will be a busy year!
Best,
Pacific Kelp Co. Team
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