York County sea farmer collaborates with Ocean Spray on product using 'upcycled' seed
COURTESY / ATLANTIC SEA FARMS
Atlantic Sea Farms is collaborating with Ocean Spray on a new product using kelp and cranberries.
After soaring seaweed demand drove a York County food processor to quadruple its space last year, the company is now teaming up with a much bigger player.
Now Atlantic Sea Farms, headquartered in Biddeford, is collaborating with Massachusetts-based food giant Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. to make a new product.
The collaboration is between two like-minded entities, Briana Warner, Atlantic Sea Farms’ CEO, told Mainebiz.
“Ocean Spray is a co-op owned by their farmers,” Warner said. “It is so unusual in the food space to see that level of involvement and inclusion by the people who grow our food. This aligns well with the work that we are doing to build a business that puts people and planet first.”
The collaboration involves incorporating cranberry seeds, typically a by-product of Ocean Spray’s processing, along with cranberry puree and kelp puree to create a product that can be used for smoothies and other recipes.
“The cranberry seeds that we use in our cubes are otherwise byproduct from making cranberry juices and sauces,” said Jesse Baines, Atlantic’s chief marketing officer.
Warner said both kelp and cranberry seeds are nutrient-dense. As a result, “we knew we needed to find a way to work with it,” she said.
And both companies use “regenerative” farming practices, she said. That involves principles such as promoting biodiversity.
Atlantic is an early adopter of the seeds as an “upcycled” ingredient, said Baines.
“We try to limit our waste on the kelp side as much as we can and we’re close to a zero-waste company as far as kelp goes, so why not find other ingredients that support that same mission?” she said.
There’s no estimate on the amount of seed to be used.
Ocean Spray is an agricultural cooperative owned by over 700 farmer families. Atlantic Sea Farms is a women-run kelp aquaculture company whose model is to collaborate with “partner-farmers” who grow the kelp that the company processes. Atlantic works with Maine fishermen to grow kelp in their off-season as a climate change adaption and mitigation strategy.
The goal, said Warner, is “to create a new and climate-friendly industry in the U.S.”
Last year, Atlantic moved to a leased space in Biddeford that was four times the size of its previous digs in Saco.
The company makes a variety of food items from a common Maine seaweed, kelp, and its retail line, developed in 2019, has grown 10-fold since then.
Ocean Spray helped Atlantic think through its design of the new processing facility to work collaboratively on nutritional testing, said Warner.
For the 2022 season, the goal is to harvest 1 million for processing at the new facility, she added.
In 2021, the harvest was over 600,000 pounds.
The cranberry kelp-cubes prioritize “family-farmed products and innovation all while expanding opportunities for Maine’s fishing communities,” Katy Galle, Ocean Spray’s senior vice president of research, Development and sustainability, said in a news release.
Last year, Atlantic Sea Farms completed a funding round that raised $3.1 million, according a Form D filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Atlantic is the first commercial seaweed farm in the U.S. and now represents over 80% of all line-grown seaweed in the country.
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