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One company from B.C. is hoping seaweed could play a big role in the future of agriculture, as it prepares to open a new biorefinery.
Cascadia Seaweed is on track to launch a new project in Port Edward, located about 15 kilometres east of Prince Rupert, B.C.
It will turn locally grown and harvested kelp and seaweed into a liquid product — called seaweed-derived biostimulant — that farmers can use to boost crop yields and build better resilience to stress like drought.
“The ocean off British Columbia, particularly in the north, is nutrient rich and it makes it quite easy to grow really good seaweed,” CEO and co-founder Michael Williamson told CBC’s Daybreak North.
“From good seaweed comes good products like biostimulants.”
The biostimulants go into the soil or are applied to the plant with foliar spray to improve the plants nutrient use efficiency, said Williamson.
“[It] gives a greater path for those fertilizer products to be up taken into the plant, and creates a much healthier soil,” he explained.
“So it’s a natural way to get plants to grow faster and bigger.”
Location, location, location
The plant will create several new full, part time and contract positions, especially during planting and harvesting, Williamson said, making it a “small but continuous” economic generator in the north.
The building the company found to create the plant in Port Edward was already outfitted for fish processing.
“So to change from fish processing to a seaweed processing facility wasn’t that much of a big step,” he added.
The company began in 2019 on Vancouver Island and expanded north. Port Edward is in close proximity to the Port of Prince Rupert to ship overseas, and also has access to rail lines to send their product to the United States.
“Most of our product is currently sold in the United States, California and the U.S. Midwest,” said Williamson.
“The transportation connections here and the intermodal transport will help us take advantage of that.”
Cascadia Seaweed has a team of about 25 people, including technicians, engineers, harvesters and scientists.
The plan is to have the plant fully up and running within the next couple of months.
