February 2026 Updates
Hello from Ketchikan, Alaska! We have some great updates from Pacific Kelp Company to share with you this month, but first, make sure you're signed up for our emails by clicking here!
Looking to the Year Ahead: Big Investments in Field Trials and Product Excellence
We’re announcing a slew of grants, initiatives, and partnerships for the coming year—all focused on rigorously testing our kelp products in real-world conditions on commercial farms.
Product validation through rigorous trials with respected testing agencies is crucial for earning our customers' trust. We've already seen our KelpEdge™ product improve yield, root development, and soil health in small greenhouse and limited outdoor trials, and now we're building on that work with larger-scale outdoor trials.
As always, we're letting science lead and doubling down on areas where we feel we can make the most impact and create the most value for our customers.
We've Won the $15,000 Agrellus Innovation Grant
We're pleased to announce that we've won the $15,000 Innovation Grant from Agrellus Agricultural Solutions—a premier marketplace and agronomist network for innovative agricultural products.
We'll be working with the Agrellus team over the next several months to develop trial protocols for our KelpEdge™ liquid kelp extract and launch at least one broad-acre trial with more than 25 acres per experiment group.
During the trial, we'll track plant growth, plant health, soil health, stress tolerance, yield, and more. The trial will be run on a commercial farm in the continental US and managed directly by a member of Agrellus' team of expert agronomists.
In addition to the trial data, at the culmination of the trial we'll receive and be able to share a detailed report with agronomist and farmer feedback about how our product performed, what was learned, and a summary of key insights.
We'll also have the opportunity to list our product and trial results on the Agrellus marketplace, increasing our access to farmers and growers all around the country.
Stay tuned for the trial results, and thank you to the Agrellus team for selecting our product for this grant opportunity.
We've Been Awarded a $50,000 Joint Innovation Project Grant
To further support our investment in field trials and product validation, we've been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation as part of its Joint Innovation Projects grant.
This funding will be used to field test our liquid kelp extract, KelpEdge™, as well as new products we're developing from Alaskan sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) in partnership with Alaskan kelp farmers.
In preparation for the 2026 growing season, we'll be partnering with agronomists and agricultural product testing agencies to test these novel kelp products on a variety of specialty crops in California.
We'll be testing our novel products against legacy kelp products to see how we can improve nutrient content, sugar content, plant health, soil health, and yield.
Thank you to the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation for this award. Stay tuned for more information on our testing plans, including target crops, testing partners, and trial results.
We've Won $150,000 to Scale Up Our Processing Line
Our final grant award in February is our largest: a $150,000 grant from the Alaska Mariculture Alliance as part of its Mariculture Incentive Grant Program.
We've been awarded these funds to purchase equipment that will boost the production capacity and quality of kelp products in our Ketchikan facility.
We'll be using these 1:1 matching funds to purchase additional equipment to improve product quality, enhance the efficiency of our production process, and scale our overall operations to increase the amount of high-quality product we can produce in Alaska.
This is the second consecutive year that we have received matching funds from the Alaska Mariculture Alliance. Last year's funding played a key role in launching our production line in Ketchikan.
We greatly appreciate their support and look forward to sharing more updates on how the funds are being used in Alaska.
