meet the producers
It’s a SHORE Thing By Janice Hopper
SHORE has been growing, harvesting and processing its Scottish seaweed since 2016, working to create an edible seaweed industry in Scotland that’s sustainable, positive for the coastal environment and beneficial for local rural communities. Today it produces a range of chips, clusters, pestos and tapenades that can be purchased across the UK.
Founded by Keith Paterson and Peter Elbourne, the inspiration for the business was looking for sustainable foods that could be grown and harvested in Scotland that met the increasing consumer demand for heathier, plant-based diets. The duo hit on seaweed as it requires zero input to grow (no land, fresh water, feed or fertilisers) and soaks up oceanic CO² in the process.
The pair’s seaweed vision was always to combine wild harvesting alongside farming, so the first step was to find the best place in Scotland to harvest and grow quality seaweed. Peter, a marine ecologist by training, led a team of scientists scouring the coastline for locations. The search led to Caithness, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea. SHORE
Keith Paterson
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secured harvest licences with landowners that include strict quotas regarding how much seaweed can be picked every year. They are now licenced to harvest seventeen different types of seaweed, using over a dozen separate sites a short journey from the company’s factory in Wick. The first harvest took place in March 2016. The team grows, forages and hand-picks a range of low shore and high shore seaweeds all year round in all weathers, including sea spaghetti, Atlantic wakame, kelp, sugar kelp and toothed wrack. One of their key species is dulse - a small, dark red seaweed that grows rapidly in the autumn. SHORE’s research into seaweed farming also started in 2016, incorporating trials with the Scottish Association of Marine Science. The farming focus is on selected species of seaweed that are in high demand yet more difficult to harvest from the wild, which means that farming and wild harvesting will continue side by side. Ropes are seeded in the autumn, yielding two-metre long plants in the spring. SHORE harvested over seventy tons of seaweed in 2021 and are aiming for one hundred tonnes in 2022.
