The North Sea is perfectly suited for growing various types of seaweed with economic potential. In Flanders, there is a sea of opportunities in the chain for companies and knowledge institutions, observes the SeaConomy consortium. The seaweed chain is also gaining interest in our country.
Seaweeds are currently still very new. Although 25 million tonnes of seaweeds are produced worldwide, opportunities for innovation and the environment remain largely underexploited in Europe.
In Flanders, the first Value at Sea pilot project with local cultivation, processing and marketing has now been launched. In about seven years, seaweeds for food products and feed could be grown in the Belgian part of the North Sea. Another decade or so later, large-scale cultivated and refined seaweeds will offer opportunities for biomaterials.
This is how SeaConomy sees the future for Flemish seaweed:
- The North Sea is ideally suited for growing Atlantic wakame, sugarweed, bladderwrack, sea oak, sea lettuce, dulse, nori, and Irish moss. Six search zones have been identified and proposed for the marine spatial plan (2020-2026). In one of them, Value at Sea pilot project has begun.
- Some 15 Flemish companies see growing commercial interest in the food, feed and agro sectors after experimenting with seaweeds. This is due to the local aspect, freshness, sustainability, taste, colour palette, unique composition and bioactive properties of seaweed.
- Seaweeds have the most short-term potential as an additive (< 10% admixture) in food and feeds because of these properties, their natural origin from the sea and their local or European origin. Local demand from the food and feed sector can be fully covered in terms of space use by cultivation in Belgian waters.
- Seaweeds to make food or feed more sustainable is possible, but they must then partially or fully replace common unsustainable elements (such as soya). To use seaweed competitively as a protein source in feeds, a constant supply of large volumes of seaweed at low cost is necessary. Such scenarios will require several more years of research and development.
What the future of seaweed in Flanders between 2025 and 2035 looks like can be downloaded at
http://fabriekenvoordetoekomst.be/sites/default/files/Attachments/Visiet…
The Netherlands is also working on seaweed projects
The Netherlands is also working on seaweed projects. For instance, our country is involved in Bio4Safe of the Interreg programme the 2 Seas region, the coastal regions along the southern North Sea and the English Channel. The aim of the project is to test in practice the role of biostimulants such as seaweed extracts and bacteria with innovative measurement sensors to reduce nutrient and water consumption in horticulture. The 2 Seas region has intensive horticulture that requires large amounts of water and fertilisers.
This project aims to reduce water and nutrient consumption via seaweed extracts and bacteria. These biostimulants increase nutrient use efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stress and plant quality. By combining those biostimulants with innovative plant sensors, the researchers hope to reduce water and fertiliser consumption by 20 and 10 per cent, respectively. They also focus on seaweed-based opportunities to create economic opportunities for seaweed producers in the 2 Seas region.
The North Sea Farm Foundation is busy testing one of the first seaweed crops with Wageningen University & Research. Trials of new crops and floating solar panels will start this autumn. Wind farms are also interested; North Sea Farm expects to start a seaweed site within wind farms in due course. This is part of the four-year Social Innovation Programme Seaweed for Food and Feed, in which both partners and the business community are working together on a sustainable seaweed sector with multifunctional seaweed farms in the North Sea linked to a chain for logistics, processing and marketing to the food industry. State Secretary Martijn van Dam of Economic Affairs invested €5 million in the programme, which will last until spring 2021.
