Project participants participating in the kick-off meeting physically and digitally.

Seaweed is a promising raw material, which so far has been too little focus on in Norwegian food production. An interdisciplinary team consisting of researchers and business actors works to build knowledge and develop processing methods to produce safe, nutritious and tasty ingredients from kelp. Everything in a sustainable way. The goal of the research project SusKelpFood is to enable an industrial production of kelp for the Nordic and European food industry.
Together, professionals across the industry (food industry and kelp producers) and the research community will develop new, valuable insights into the production and processing of kelp. This week, project participants from Norway, Denmark and Iceland gathered in Ålesund. In addition, a handful of others participated digitally.
The agenda with this meeting was primarily to plan the work related to processing methods, analysis of essential food properties (i.e., food safety, nutritional content and taste profile) from innovative kelp ingredients, energy consumption, and consumer preferences, as well as organizing data collection for life cycle analysis, to name a few.
In the coming months, the researchers are planning several practical experiments in connection with the harvest season for commercially grown kelp.
The leader of the SusKelpFood project, Pierrick Stévant in Møreforsking, reports on very good chemistry between dedicated researchers and industry partners during one of the first physical meetings since the start of the Covid pandemic. The project group also received important input from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority and from leading players from the growing kelp industry in Norway.
- This was very nice and useful. It bodes well for the continuation!

Presentation of work packages, and locally harvested kelp. Photo credit: Pierrick Stévant.