Several international companies are eyeing up New Zealand coastal and offshore waters to establish seaweed farms which a marine researcher says could earn tens of millions of dollars.
AUT seaweed biology Associate Professor, Lindsey White singles out seaweeds as future major player in the country's blue economy with bottomless potential earnings and he explains why New Zealand waters are an increasingly attractive option.
Kelp Photo: Kelp Blue - Sunny Sanderson
While seaweeds aren’t currently in the emissions trading scheme, White says there’s a push for them them to be and to make them tradable carbon credits.
“Seaweeds can produce more bio-mass per unit area than terrestrial plants...of course they also don’t take up good arable land that we want to use for other purposes.”
While there’s not a lot happening down in New Zealand, currently, seaweed farming is a mature industry worldwide, he says.
“There’s close to 30 million tonnes of seaweed farmed across the globe currently and it’s around a $15 billion industry at the moment.
“The environmental impacts are pretty low and in fact they have positive impacts in terms of ecosystem services, in terms of increasing biodiversity around seaweed farms.”
The potential products include plant treatments, human food, textiles and nutraceuticals, he says.
Sunny Sanderson from Kelp Blue which is a restorative large-scale offshore kelp cultivation enterprise doing due diligence here.
She told Kathryn Ryan it’s very early days for the company in New Zealand.
“But what we are doing is looking at areas around the South Island, because I feel like we’re a little bit different to your average farm in that what we do is we will be taking things offshore and growing between 5 to 10 kilometres offshore at depths of 60 to 150 metres deep.
“And then we basically suspend the arrays 20 metres below the surface and grow bladder kelp.”
Bladder kelp grows to about 20 metres high but up to 65 metres in some areas, she says.
“Our primary aim is to be restoring ocean health.”
The company also aims to boost biodiversity and increase fish stocks though carbon sequestration and deacidification of waters, she says.
Sanderson says the company doesn’t want to be bound to short funding cycles though, and it plans to harvest the top metre and a half of kelp to produce environmentally friendly feedstock and bio stimulants to offset environmentally damaging products on the market.
The first pilot will begin in Namibia shortly, she says.
“It’s not something we’re rushing into, it’s something where we want to walk before we run and make sure we get this right.”
