Maine seaweed company bids for more growth, signs celebrity chef-backed business will survive

Seaweed farmers David Leith, left, and Stewart Hunt take in a line of kelp off the Cumberland coast in 2021. Associated Press

A Saco seaweed company backed by celebrity Tom Colicchio is hoping to raise $3.5 million for product improvements when it strikes a deal with a new customer.

Atlantic Sea Farms filed for private financing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 23. The funding comes a year after Atlantic raised $3.1 million in venture capital, which helped pay for the construction of 27,00 square meters. – Foot Processing Institute in Biddeford. This is four times the size of the company’s location in Saco.

The company offers a wide variety of food products from Maine seaweed. The company started as a mussel and kelp farm, an ocean-accepted corporation, but since 2018, under the leadership of CEO Briana Warner, Atlantic has expanded and now has 27 partner kelp farmers in the state, mainly lobster fishermen who work out of season. Those harvesters brought in 970,000 pounds of kelp this year.

It is not yet clear what the new financing round might mean.

A spokesman for Atlantic Marine Farms, Chief Marketing Officer Jesse Baines, said the company plans to use the proceeds to expand its market and innovate at the Biddeford facility, but would not disclose specifics.

However, on the same day as the SEC filing, Atlantic Mind Blow, a Virginia-based company that produces seafood-like products, purchased $100,000 from Plant Based Seafood Co. He announced that he has made a partnership with Atlantic Sea Farms kelp will be added to new Dusted Shrimp and Dusted Scallops products this month and to Crab Cakes in 2023. The products will initially be sold at more than 300 Sprout Farmers Market grocery stores in the US.

Mind Blown has been garnering attention for its products by winning several industry awards. Colicchio, a judge on the Bravo TV network series “Top Chef,” invested in the company this spring.

Marine sustainability

Both Atlantic and Plant Based are women-owned companies that demonstrate a commitment to environmental sustainability and ocean health.

The partnership is an example of how Atlantic Sea Farms can increase demand for Maine-grown seaweed among environmentally conscious consumers. Kelp improves the quality of growing water by absorbing carbon and other nutrients that can lead to algae blooms and acidify the water in the growing environment.

“Other brands are very keen to make a positive impact through their own sourcing decisions,” says Bains. “Atlantic Sea Farms has stepped up as a partner to help them do this.”

The use of local seaweed is becoming a way for some companies to increase their social credibility, and Maine’s seaweed “regenerative” label is part of that trend. Atlantic Sea Farms is working with the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay to measure the potential of kelp to mitigate climate change and ocean acidification.

Nicole Price, director of the Venture Research Center at Bigelow Seafood Solutions, said Atlantic Seafood Farms is working with the center and partners on several studies. One is looking at how kelp can reduce what Bigelow and the Island Institute call the “halo effect” — the weakening of shells in mussels, clams and other shellfish caused by ocean acidification.

“That study has yet to be published and is in the peer review process, but we are very confident in the results,” Price said. “We’ve been able to detect this halo effect at a farm in Maine for three years in a row. When we plant mushrooms to grow in kelp farms, the shells get harder.

These studies are now being replicated in Alaska and Norway.

In other studies with Atlantic Sea Farms, Bigelow is developing genetic tools to determine how much carbon kelp beds are sequestering in sea sediments and what traits kelp beds contribute to sequestering carbon. The lab is also working with Atlantic to study how adding seaweed to animal feed can reduce the amount of methane the animals emit.

Lobster option

In addition to the environmental benefits of kelp farming, Warner was drawn to the potential economic benefits for coastal communities. Prior to joining The Atlantic, she served as director of economic development at the Island Institute in Rockland, supporting the resilience of coastal communities. There, in an interview with Talking Food in Maine, she was concerned about the state’s dependence on lobster.

“We’re at an urgent and critical juncture where we need to create exceptional conditions on the Maine coast,” Warner said in an interview last year. “Lobster will be around in 30-40 years, but not like it is today. We need to make a difference now when people have capital, when they have skills on the water.

A Maine fleet owner and operator, Lobsterman finds them well-suited to moving to kelp during the winter because they are already equipped with a boat and some necessary gear.

As CEO at Ocean Approved, she worked to build partnerships with fishermen, providing technical support to obtain seeds, training, leases, and persuading them to get into kelp. And to make the deal even sweeter, Oceana has guaranteed to buy whatever they produce with approved kelp.

The company has worked to quickly build demand for Maine-grown seaweed. Ocean Allowed Maine has partnered with restaurants to promote kelp as a healthy ingredient on their menus. Sweetgreen, Chef David Chang, Legit Seafood and Fast Food Chain B. Well, everyone was on board. Then Covid hit, so Ocean Acceptance turned to retail, like Atlantic Sea Farms, and created a consumer product line. The packaging, which features stories from Maine kelp farmers, includes kelp cubes for soups and smoothies, minced kelp salad and seaweed kimchi.

That guarantee was an important step in buying their partners’ kelp. Getting people interested was a tough sell at first, as a 2017 benchmark study by the Maine Aquaculture Association found that only 1 in 6 seaweed farms were profitable.

“I think the guarantee of buying from partner farms is critical, especially for new farmers who are learning as they go,” said Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association. “Atlantic Farms invests time and money for the farmer by guaranteeing the purchase of the product, greatly reducing the risk of not being able to sell the product.”

In the year The 2017 study was conducted when the sector was just starting, but since then, the profitability of kelp farming has been steadily improving, he said. The association is now conducting a new study, the results of which should be available by the end of the year.

“I think well-run farms are profitable because more and more families are moving in,” Bell said. “They wouldn’t take the risk if it wasn’t profitable.”

Baines agreed, noting that one of Atlantic Sea Farms’ partner farmers had a four-acre farm that made six figures last year. But kelp farming is mainly used as an additional income now.

“It doesn’t replace the income you get from fishing, but it mitigates the damage from bad seasons,” she said.

Related stories