North Sea Farm 1 Project
Simply Blue Group, joined the North Sea Farm 1 Project (NSF1) consortium in March 2024, to develop the world’s first commercial-scale seaweed farm located within an offshore windfarm. Positioned off the coast of the Netherlands in the North Sea, the 10ha farm is planned to become operational in autumn this year when it will be deployed and seeded, with the first harvest expected to be in spring 2025.
Sponsored by Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund, the consortium aims to help address climate action targets in Europe by tapping into the vast, unmet potential of seaweed cultivation. Like trees, seaweed absorbs nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon dioxide and produces oxygen, thereby being part of the solution to climate change and ocean acidification. In doing this, it produces a valuable biomass with a wide range of uses from pharmaceuticals to animal feed to fertilisers.
Simply Blue Group is focused on replacing fossil fuels with clean ocean energy, removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and developing sustainable sources of protein, while attracting investment into coastal communities. It has a keen interest in multiple use of wind farms and believes that efficient use of sea space is key to working with the oceans on climate change and bring more local communities and supply chains into the transition to a low carbon economy.
About North Sea Farmers 1 (NSF1) Project
North Sea Farmers (NSF) is an independent and not-for-profit sector organisation for the European seaweed industry. NSF has a member base of over one hundred companies, pioneering start-ups, research institutes, NGOs and other stakeholders. By enabling these members to become successful with their seaweed ambitions NSF hope to shape an innovative and prosperous sector in Europe.
NSF works in the entire seaweed value chain and facilitates knowledge exchange on sustainable seaweed cultivation, production, marketing, education, policies and research, and facilitates joint innovation projects. NSF’s activities are mainly focused on, but not limited to, the North Sea.
For North Sea Farm 1, North Sea Farmers will head up a consortium of partner organisations from across Europe that are involved in the entire seaweed production supply chain. This includes researchers Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Deltares and Silvestrum Climate Associates, seaweed extract manufacturers Algaia and maritime contractors Van Oord.