State of the Kelp Industry Report: Live Q&A

Welcome and Session Overview [00:00:03]

Welcome to the GreenWave Spotlight. During this first presentation of the 2026 series, we’re going to take a closer look at GreenWave’s recently published report, The State of the Kelp Industry: A Decade in Review and the Road Ahead.

I’m your host, Kendall Barbery, GreenWave’s Director of Partnerships and lead author on the report. Today I’ll go over a few housekeeping items, then we’ll take a quick poll before jumping into the presentation. After the presentation, I’ll be joined by my colleague Sam Garwin, GreenWave’s Director of Market Development, for Q&A. We’ll close the meeting at the top of the hour, or earlier if questions wind down.

A few quick housekeeping reminders: this webinar is being recorded. Only the audio and video of hosts and unmuted speakers will be captured. After the session, we’ll post the recording to the events page of GreenWave’s online Hub at hub.greenwave.org. Both the chat and Q&A features are active. Please use the Q&A function in your Zoom toolbar for questions.

Audience Poll: Who’s in the Room Today [00:01:54]

Before jumping into the presentation, we want to get a sense of who’s here. We’d love to know what best describes your main role or affiliation across the kelp industry — seed producer, farmer, buyer or processor, scientist or researcher, NGO, public agency, or enthusiast. Results show a mix of seed producers, farmers, scientists and researchers, NGOs, buyers, public agencies, and enthusiasts. Thank you all for joining.

About GreenWave and the Kelp Industry Report [00:03:19]

For anyone new in the room: GreenWave is a nonprofit organization founded in 2014 to catalyze the growth of regenerative ocean farming. In addition to producing kelp seed and farming kelp in southern New England, we work up and down the kelp value chain in the US and Canada to identify and address bottlenecks and develop solutions to shared challenges. We do this through four key program areas: training and support, climate subsidies, farmer-forward infrastructure, and market development.

Over the past decade, GreenWave has worked alongside coastal communities to learn, adapt, and build the foundations of the kelp farming sector. What began as a handful of experimental seaweed gardens and forward-thinking companies has grown into a budding regenerative industry with dozens of nurseries, hundreds of farms, thousands of acres permitted for cultivation, and a range of downstream companies using kelp for food, cosmetics, and agricultural inputs.

This journey has had its setbacks. Growth has not been linear. In addition to contending with climate change and powerful winter storms, kelp farmers have grappled with seed quality issues, processing and marketing bottlenecks, and other growing pains. The post-pandemic years have been especially hard on food and CPG companies. After years of accelerated growth and investment, several companies scaled back or closed their doors. In recent years, investments have cooled. 2025 also brought new uncertainties to the US sector and to cross-border collaborations between the US and Canada.

Terms like “rollercoaster” and “hype cycle” have been commonplace — and we still face challenges — but we’re also in a period of moving past the hype, building slow and steady growth, and crawling out of disillusionment with a wealth of experience to inform our next steps.

State of the Kelp Industry Report: Data Sources [00:05:35]

The State of the Kelp Industry report draws on multiple data sources from across the kelp value chain, including over 3,800 outplanting, growth, and harvest measurements logged in GreenWave’s My Kelp app by over 70 farmers across the US and Canada since 2021. It also includes market insights from over 100 businesses reporting supply and demand in Seaweed Source, targeted surveys to seed producers and farmers, publicly available datasets including lease and permit records from state and provincial agencies, and expert interviews with over 40 key stakeholders.

Together, these sources provide the most comprehensive snapshot to date of the North American kelp industry.

For the remainder of the presentation, I’ll share key stats to orient you to the current state of the industry, then focus on what the report’s findings and recommendations mean for four key groups: seed producers, farmers, buyers, and the community of support — which encompasses industry associations, NGOs, extension agencies, funders, and others. Each of us holds a different lever for scaling the industry, and scaling will only happen if those levers are pulled in coordination.

Production Capacity by the Numbers [00:07:01]

Today there are over 50 facilities approved to produce kelp seed for commercial, research, or restoration purposes across coasts. There are over 10 species of kelp approved for cultivation, many of which are not produced elsewhere. Cumulatively, commercial facilities have the capacity to produce millions of feet of seedstring to meet farmer demand.

As of August 2025, there were 248 permitted farms covering more than 6,200 acres in the US and Canada combined — a significant increase from the handful of farms in place only a decade ago. Farm sizes range from less than an acre across all regions to over 450 acres, with the largest individual farms in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Excluding Maine’s Limited Purpose Aquaculture licenses, the average farm size across all regions is 32 acres, with a median of seven acres. Notably, 53% of farms are between one and 10 acres in size.

According to farmer-reported data in My Kelp, farmers across these farms are outplanting an average of 1,800 feet of seedstring per acre they lease, with notable differences across regions and sites depending on water depth, array type, anchor type, and other factors.

What does this mean? First and foremost, there is enough capacity in place to produce tens of millions of pounds of kelp — yet only about a third of that area is currently under production.

Farm Distribution Across Six Key Regions [00:08:56]

Farm distribution spans six key regions: Atlantic Canada, the Gulf of Maine (Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts north of Cape Cod), Southern New England, the contiguous US West Coast (California, Oregon, and Washington), British Columbia, and Alaska. Atlantic Canada and Alaska hold the largest acreage, with significant latent capacity across most regions — either unfarmed while farmers wait for markets to develop, or allocated to more profitable crops like oysters or mussels. Applications for new leases and permits are particularly active in California and Alaska.

When all permitted, under-review, and potential acreage is considered — including aquaculture opportunity areas like the Southern California Bight and the Argyle Aquaculture Development Area in Nova Scotia — there are upwards of 20,000 additional acres that could be made available. The key takeaway: leases and permits are no longer the core bottleneck to scaling the kelp industry.

Market Landscape: Diversification and Value Chain Transformation [00:11:05]

The market landscape is transforming. Food and beverage companies have historically represented the majority of downstream demand for North American kelp, and a surge in new food and beverage companies between 2016 and 2020 largely coincided with the narrative of kelp as a “climate hero” ingredient. That segment remains an important base for the industry — but it’s also retracting.

What’s emerging is a diversification of this landscape, with pull from new market segments. Companies are finding product-market fit with biomaterials including cellulose and nanocellulose, functional ingredients for food and personal care, and agricultural inputs such as biostimulants and animal feeds. Many of these companies were founded within the past five to 10 years, making this — alongside farmers — truly an industry of startups.

Based on buyer-reported data in Seaweed Source and sourcing data reported by companies outside that platform, current market pull is estimated at about five and a half million pounds of kelp wet weight.

While this represents new opportunity distributed across a range of market segments, these opportunities are also changing the shape of the value chain. Few buyers are seeking freshly harvested, unprocessed kelp at the dock. Instead, prospective buyers want consistent volumes in processed and stabilized formats that meet their in-product specifications — exposing a critical infrastructure gap that is shared across most regions where the kelp industry has developed.

A critical question remains: who should develop, maintain, and own this infrastructure? This will be a defining decision point for farmers and downstream businesses across regions now and into the future.

Beyond the base of prospective buyers represented in Seaweed Source, there are potential customers who aren’t seeking kelp at all — rather, they’re businesses with problems that kelp can solve. Shoring up volatile supply chains with domestic raw materials. Providing functional benefits like reducing fat in a CPG product while maintaining texture, or enhancing soil quality for land-based agriculture. At this stage of growth, production capacity is in place to meet these needs and unlock new uses for the regional kelp species under cultivation — but no single farmer or company can move this needle alone.

Key Takeaways for Seed Producers, Farmers, Buyers, and the Community of Support [00:15:15]

A quick recap: nurseries and leases and permits are in place. The market landscape is maturing. Processing infrastructure, though unevenly distributed, is beginning to connect supply with demand. The scaffolding of an industry is in place, with the capacity for scale — but not all the pieces are fully aligned. The defining challenge now is mobilizing this capacity and aligning it with scaled demand.

For seed producers: The report highlights a single dominant lever that drives the success of the entire value chain — seed quality. Seed quality has been inconsistent across regions, and with it, farm yields, which average just over two pounds per foot. High-quality seed delivered at the optimal time of season improves yields, stabilizes supply, builds buyer confidence, and increases farmer profitability. Without it, scaling stalls. It’s time to shift from early models that weren’t designed for commercial scale to updated SOPs, nursery designs, and professionalized systems for controlled propagation — including gametophyte production — to ensure consistent delivery of reliable, high-quality seed. A seed producer’s role isn’t just producing seed; it’s stabilizing the entire industry’s production base.

For farmers: You’ve built enormous capacity over the past decade, but capacity alone does not equal income. In addition to assessing opportunities for shared infrastructure to improve harvest efficiency and post-harvest processing and stabilization, three things will be essential for unlocking demand: collaboration and cooperation with other farmers and downstream buyers; aggregation of crops to spread risk and gain structured market access through shared logistics, collective bargaining power, advanced purchase agreements, and economies of scale; and alignment with buyer needs.

For buyers: While the value chain is still taking shape, supply can scale if you send credible demand signals. Farmers need forward contracts, volume commitments, format specifications, and price clarity. Without these, farmers cannot justify mobilizing production — let alone build or partner with businesses or processors to get kelp into the right format and stability to meet in-product needs. Your purchasing decisions may shape the pace of industry growth and where and how processing infrastructure develops.

For the community of support: Supply is in place and market demand is diversifying. New segments are signaling potential for scale. In addition to directing funds and logistical support toward developing demand-led processing infrastructure, the industry needs additional coordination infrastructure — farmer cooperatives, crop aggregators, and crop brokers. Coordinated support of value chain logistics will unlock existing farm capacity faster than adding new permits. These are levers we can all pull together.

The kelp industry is no longer defined by whether we can grow kelp. We know we can. Now it’s defined by whether we can coordinate this production to shape a truly resilient industry over the next decade. Download the full report at hub.greenwave.org.

Q&A: Protocols for Less Conventional Macroalgae, and Heavy Metals Testing [00:20:52]

The first question from George asks about the best source to consult when developing new protocols for less conventionally marketed macroalgae production — essentially, how to avoid wasting time on unproductive directions.

From a market development perspective, there are two ways to interpret “less conventionally marketed macroalgae.” One is sugar kelp itself — the species most widely cultivated in North America yet a blip on the radar from the perspective of world cultivation, and from the perspective of downstream companies knowing what to do with it. For sugar kelp, the approach isn’t seaweed-specific — it’s general business practice: product-market fit, working backwards from customer needs to figure out format, volume, and positioning to solve a specific problem, rather than approaching a downstream customer with raw agricultural commodity and asking if they want some kelp. Nobody is sitting around waiting for kelp.

Another interpretation of “less conventionally marketed” is the variety of species cultivatable in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest beyond sugar kelp. Given the volume of sugar kelp already on the market and the ongoing challenges in finding product-market fit for it, diversifying into those other species — and finding the unique downstream applications for each — may offer more opportunity. There isn’t a single brilliant source with all the answers; it requires collaboration across the value chain, particularly with downstream companies developing applications. For general guidance on production resources, GreenWave’s online Hub at hub.greenwave.org has a growing library of courses and tools, and GreenWave is actively working to identify gaps and expand those resources.

George’s second question covers arsenic and heavy metals content in kelp across various regions. GreenWave has been working with farmers to ensure they can conduct their own testing and maintain their own data. A project coordinated by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation is aggregating compositional data — including heavy metals — for Alaska farmers.

An important reminder: kelp farms are not permitted just anywhere. Site selection is carefully conducted in water that is known, at the time of permitting, to be clear of significant toxins. No significant heavy metal issues have emerged with farms to date. On arsenic specifically: there are two forms — inorganic and organic — and only the inorganic form presents a toxicity concern for humans. Arsenic speciation testing is a critical additional step to distinguish between the two. GreenWave published a buyer’s guide and a farmer’s guide this past year as part of a NOAA Sea Grant project; one of those includes a testing guide with information on labs that can conduct this testing. That resource will be shared in the post-webinar follow-up.

Q&A: Infrastructure Investments and Processing Bottlenecks [00:27:50]

Amanda Kaiser asks about infrastructure investments needed and key bottlenecks. A really key piece is aligning with end customers and working closely with them to understand specifications before installing infrastructure — because without that alignment, you run the risk of having the wrong formats in place and ending up with stranded inventory, which has happened across the industry. GreenWave has coordinated cohort programs in key regions and managed Seaweed Source to do that value chain coordination — having someone who can speak the language of both the farmer and the downstream buyer, translating those needs into a workable solution.

There’s also an important distinction between primary and secondary processing infrastructure. Primary processing is stabilization of kelp immediately after it comes out of the water — this is a requirement for almost every agricultural commodity. Whether you freeze, dry, ferment, or use ambient temperature stabilization, this is a critical quality control step. Crucially, even at this primary stage, knowing the intended end use matters, because different stabilization methods preserve certain compounds and destroy others.

Once kelp is stabilized, it typically goes to a downstream customer who will transform it further — extracting compounds or putting it into a different physical format and marketing it as a product, not just as kelp. That secondary processing is where more VC capital and commercial activity have been concentrated. The challenge has been that downstream companies haven’t wanted to think about primary processing — but at this stage of the industry, they’re being forced to, because standard formats and established infrastructure simply don’t exist yet. Much of what currently exists is seafood processing facilities being retrofitted to handle kelp.

Build-Back-Better investments in Alaska have helped move the ball forward on infrastructure in key regions, but needs remain in other areas.

Q&A: West Coast Kelp Farming Bottlenecks [00:31:53]

A question about distinct bottlenecks to kelp production along the US West Coast. GreenWave has direct experience here, having started a farm site in Humboldt Bay, northern California, working with collaborators including The Nature Conservancy, Sun in Seaweed, and Hog Island Oyster Company.

The West Coast presents a different environment from southern New England, Gulf of Maine, and Alaska — much more exposed coastline, without the same protected coves and bays. The cost of operations is high, partly driven by the regulatory environment and the processes for evaluating and identifying sites and appropriate infrastructure.

GreenWave published a report on the California leasing and permitting process, including a more detailed look in 2023 at the journey to permit farms for bulk kelp cultivation, the tools farmers could use to support restoration needs, and evaluation of different processes. No new leases or permits had been issued in California state waters in over 30 years.

The largest area of opportunity right now is through aquaculture opportunity areas in federal waters, particularly the Southern California Bight — though those will favor larger operations that can manage the risk and cost of offshore positioning. There are also smaller sites in state-managed tidelands. The nature of the coastline, high operating costs, and the pace of building regulatory familiarity have made progress slow but steady.

Q&A: Market Segments, Demand Estimates, and Where the Industry Is Growing [00:35:15]

Questions from multiple attendees about demand estimates, market values, and where the industry is headed. The industry report’s breakdown of market segments shows demand across food and beverage, functional ingredients, biomaterials, and agricultural uses as reported by prospective buyers. Current market pull is estimated at about five and a half million pounds wet weight.

The shift happening now is away from food and CPG as the primary focus and toward diversification across new market segments — particularly functional ingredients, biomaterials, and agricultural uses. On biomaterials: companies pursuing bioplastics and textiles (such as Sway, Lolly Wear, and Keel Labs) currently need processed and refined formats sourced from overseas, because North American production isn’t yet at the scale or price point those companies require. However, there are right-sized material applications — particularly around cellulose and nanocellulose as byproducts of biostimulant production — that are more appropriately matched to current production volumes and market needs.

For entrepreneurs and innovators: the trick is looking for demand and understanding the functional capabilities of kelp well enough to see where they intersect. Nobody is looking for kelp itself. But someone might be looking for a way to suspend protein better in a high-protein beverage. That’s what there’s demand for. The opportunity is to find what consumer or material demand can be met with the functional capabilities of kelp — and develop a product marketed toward that demand, under a name that isn’t “kelp.” That’s how you connect a raw agricultural commodity to market pull.

Q&A: International Co-op Models and Farmer Aggregation [00:41:45]

Tamson asks whether the North American industry has looked abroad for processing and co-op models to follow and adapt. GreenWave has been looking at both international models and other domestic agricultural sectors. GreenWave has brought in groups like Organic Valley and other land-based agricultural co-ops to help kelp farmers understand structures that might work in different cases. Colleague Lindsay Olson has done significant work in this space, particularly in Alaska.

Aggregation is a proven model for allowing individual small-holder farmers to access markets and still produce the consistent, high-quality inputs that downstream companies need. The cocoa model is instructive: collecting raw beans from multiple farmers, processing them together at the fermentation stage to achieve a consistent level of quality, and then marketing as a single product has generally seen more success than having each farmer process individually. That ability to deliver a consistent product, and to add or preserve value at the processing stage, is the core lesson.

For kelp farming, some form of aggregation is likely necessary — whether a formal cooperative with farmer ownership, a nonprofit model, a service model, or some other structure. The right answer will depend largely on how farmers themselves want to show up and participate. GreenWave is actively working with farmers, processors, and buyers to explore what models can work.

Q&A: Gametophyte Culturing and Seed Bank Management [00:45:49]

Veck Grimes asks about managing the seasonality of seed production through year-round gametophyte culturing. This is exactly the challenge that gametophyte culturing is designed to address. Most early seed nurseries — including GreenWave’s own — relied heavily on meiospore collection: going out in the fall to collect reproductive tissue, bringing it back to the facility, releasing it, and producing seed. GreenWave has shifted toward doing multiple collections over the year to support a gametophyte seed bank, with a nursery that relies on those gametophytes for the more seasonal production cycle.

Gametophyte culturing across all regions isn’t currently possible everywhere — different rules in different areas may not enable it yet — but having standardized nursery infrastructure is critical so that all producers can work from common ground and ensure consistently high-quality seed, whether starting with gametophytes or not.

At GreenWave, we’ve built out a production-oriented seed bank at our facility in New Haven, maintaining seed isolated by regional population from Southern New England and Gulf of Maine. Our team manages that year-round process and distributes gametophytes to nurseries producing seed for farmers in a given region — whether that nursery is led by a co-op, an informal group of farmers, or another facility. Equipping those nurseries with high-quality gametophytes at the start of the season cuts down on process time and reduces the uncertainty around seasonal reproductive tissue collection. This model has produced measurable improvements in seed quality leaving nurseries and in results on farms.

Q&A: Bioplastics, Value-Added Products, and Kelp Material Applications [00:48:51]

Alexandra Bailey and others ask about bioplastics and value-added kelp material applications. The scale and price problem for bioplastics and bulk materials go hand in hand. At GreenWave, the focus has been identifying high-value, lower-volume applications — with the idea that as those scale, they’ll create side streams and byproducts appropriate for bioplastics or other materials. As high-value products grow, volume accumulates that could eventually meet the price point for bioplastics. But that’s still a fair ways out.

Beyond black-and-white thinking about buying all seaweed from overseas versus all from North American farms: there may be a solid business case for domestic sourcing at smaller volumes — either because the kelp confers specific functional properties, because a local supply chain is more secure and predictable, or because it aligns with company values. Even a small but very consistent and reliable customer can make a significant difference on the farming side. The recommendation is to look at ways to add incremental value and volume rather than going all in.

Q&A: Kelp Food Company Challenges and Sugar Kelp R&D [00:52:45]

Questions from Liz and Shoko about what we’ve learned from kelp food startups, and how much R&D investment has gone into sugar kelp as a food ingredient. Many companies that haven’t succeeded in the kelp food space pushed to put a significant amount of kelp in the product — which makes sense from a mission perspective — but the core challenge remained whether people actually want to eat it voluntarily, independent of values. Does it taste good? Is it convenient? Is it the right price? Those three factors still drive consumer purchase decisions. The American palate is evolving — Asian flavors are trending, today’s children love seaweed snacks — but for now, high-kelp-content products face real palatability challenges. Practically speaking, some companies invested heavily in physical infrastructure before they had a sales base to cover operational costs, which is a common startup failure pattern across food industries generally. Partnering with existing processors, co-manufacturers, or third-party formulators — paying for equipment only when using it — is a smarter early-stage approach, with the shift to owning equipment when you’re bursting at the seams and can’t meet demand.

On sugar kelp R&D investment: most of that information is held closely by the companies that paid for it. GreenWave has recently commissioned a literature review specific to sugar kelp as well as studies on properties that may lend themselves to applications in food and beauty. Key areas identified include gut health, sodium reduction, and texturizing. Gut health is the most innovative and exciting emerging area. GreenWave is working on making that research accessible to the broader community.

Q&A: Dulse Cultivation in North America [00:57:25]

A question from David Berg and additional context from Matt Obie about companies cultivating dulse. A couple of trials and sites cultivating dulse on longlines for farmers have been tested, but the predominant model for dulse remains land-based cultivation. Operations include Sunken Seaweed in northern California (tank-based), Oregon Seaweeds (also producing dulse in tanks), operations in Washington, and Acadian Sea Plants in Nova Scotia. GreenWave’s report appendix includes regional snapshots listing which species appear on farmer permits where that information is publicly accessible — covering multiple species of kelps as well as dulse, other red algae, and even Ulva.

Closing [00:58:50]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to join, submit questions, and participate in the chat. For those who want to continue the conversation about kelp forest restoration and artificial reef development, join us on GreenWave’s online Hub at hub.greenwave.org. If you’re registered in the Hub, you can participate in community conversations — and you can follow along with those threads whether you’re registered or not. Download the full State of the Kelp Industry report at hub.greenwave.org.