THE NORWEGIAN SEAWEED CENTRE

About the seaweed centre.

The Norwegian Seaweed Centre is a national research and innovation infrastructure designed to advance sustainable seaweed aquaculture as a strategic contribution to future food, feed, material, and energy systems. In response to global challenges related to population growth, climate change, and increasing pressure on natural resources, the centre aims to develop scalable, environmentally responsible marine biomass production systems that support the transition to a sustainable blue bioeconomy. The centre combines fundamental and applied research with technology development and industry collaboration across the full seaweed value chain, creating a comprehensive platform for innovation and knowledge generation.

Overview of the different nodes.

The Seaweed Centre has a total of six nodes that are thematically divided into onshore facilities, offshore facilities, simulation and monitoring, vessels and logistics, preprocessing and storage as well as processing and products (Figure 1).

The onshore facility provide controlled environments for experimental cultivation, enabling systematic investigation of growth conditions and biomass quality. These facilities support early-stage development and testing before scaling to open-sea environments. The sea facilities constitute a core component of the centre, offering access to offshore and nearshore cultivation sites where large-scale production systems can be evaluated under realistic environmental conditions. These sites allow for the assessment of structural designs, deployment strategies, and ecosystem interactions associated with seaweed farming.

To support data-driven decision-making and system optimization, the centre includes a dedicated node for simulation and monitoring. This node integrate environmental monitoring, sensor technologies, and numerical models to analyse oceanographic conditions, biomass performance, and environmental impacts. Such tools are essential for improving site selection, predicting production outcomes, and ensuring sustainable operation. Vessels and logistics node provide the necessary maritime infrastructure to enable deployment, maintenance, harvesting, and transport operations, bridging the gap between experimental research and industrial-scale application.

Beyond cultivation, the Norwegian Seaweed Centre addresses post-harvest challenges through nodes focused on preprocessing and storage, as well as processing and product development. These nodes support research on handling, preservation, and stabilization of seaweed biomass, as well as its conversion into value-added products for food, feed, biobased materials, and other industrial applications. This end-to-end perspective enables holistic evaluation of technical feasibility, resource efficiency, and sustainability across the entire value chain.

Through coordinated projects spanning integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA), blue carbon potential, environmental sustainability, and commercialization pathways, the Norwegian Seaweed Centre serves as a national and international hub for collaboration. By bringing together infrastructure, interdisciplinary competence, and stakeholder engagement, the centre aims to accelerate innovation in seaweed aquaculture and contribute to climate mitigation, coastal development, and long-term ecosystem resilience within a sustainable marine bioeconomy

Figure 1: An overview of the infrastructure and the six different nodes

Acknowledgment

This work is funded by The Norwegian Research Council (Norwegian Test Center for Seaweed Cultivation and Utilization Technologies – RI SEAWEED, 322258 )

https://norwegianseaweedcentre.com/