Dutch and Belgian parties co-develop seaweed farm in Belgian Norther OWF

© Stichting Noordzeeboerderij

The Belgian-Dutch project consortium “Wier & Wind” will test scalable seaweed cultivation within the Belgian offshore wind farm Norther for the next 2 years. The test is seen by the consortium as a world first and is an important step towards large scale sustainable food production in the North Sea and of multiple use of space at sea.

Seaweed is an important part of sustainable food production due to its high nutritional values. It can also be used for other purposes such as biomaterials. Seaweed is currently mainly grown in Asia. Due to the increasing worldwide demand for seaweed, upscaling the European seaweed sector can be a good alternative closer to home.

In the Flanders / Netherlands border region, small seaweed growers have already started in recent years, especially in sheltered areas or sometimes near the coast. In order to meet the increasing demand, it is necessary to scale it up. According to the initiators, this is best done further at sea, in wind farms.

Upscaling of seaweed cultivation & multiple use of wind farms
The consortium examining seaweed scale-up in combination with wind farms consists of AtSeaNova, Murre Technologies, Seaweed Harvest Nordsea and GEOxyz. The sector organization Stichting Noordzeeboerderij and knowledge institutes Ugent and HZ University of Applied Science will support them in this project.

The project partners want to develop a large-scale and automated seaweed production system which is safe, sustainable, ecologically sound and offshore-proof. In addition, it must be suitable to function within offshore wind farms in order to promote multiple use of space at sea.

The collaboration with the owners of the Norther offshore wind farm (Elicio NV, Eneco Wind Belgium SA and Diamond Generating Europe BV) helps to test whether it is commercially feasible to develop large-scale seaweed cultivation in wind farms. This wind farm, located approximately 23 km off the coast of Zeebrugge, comprises 44 wind turbines with a combined capacity of 370 MW and has been operational since May this year.

The complementarity between Norther and the consortium is reflected in logistics, among other things. Maintenance or seaweed harvesting can be planned simultaneous with wind farm maintenance, technical inspections or urgent interventions.

Next steps
The project runs from July 2019 to June 2022 and is co-funded by Interreg Flanders-the Netherlands. The project consortium is currently working on the development of a seaweed production and harvesting system. Automation will enable to scale up the seaweed production per hectare and the quality, making it an economical . The production system will be installed at the end of this year. The first harvest is scheduled for April-May next year.The new production system will be installed in the Norther wind farm at the end of 2020.

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