The co-founder of the red seaweed growing facility in the Bluff says they are not trying to mimic the ocean but are trying to create conditions that optimise growing of the methane-reducing bioactives that live in seaweed.
Farmer’s Weekly reported Dr Steve Meller, co-founder of CH4 Global, visited NZ last week to give a presentation to a Parliamentary select committee tasked with receiving submissions on the Regulatory Systems (primary industries) Amendment Bill.
Meller is challenging government authorities on the irony of growing tonnes of the NZ native Asparagopsis armata seaweed in NZ, while being unable to sell it here as a methane-reducing feed supplement.
Meller said CH4 Global chose the Bluff site as it had access to seawater and was already consented for extraction.
Seawater is piped to the site and cleaned of airborne and waterborne pathogens before it is fit to grow seaweed.
The process of growing and commercially selling seaweed has four sequential stages, three of which are supported at the Bluff facility.
There is a hatchery where young seaweed is kept free of contaminants and grown in small tanks as feedstock.
A portion of the feedstock is transferred to larger, 3000 litre vessels in a second growing out phase.
In this second phase the feedstock is grown to a certain level of maturity, where the biomass has achieved a certain size and the bioactives are at an appropriate level.
The seaweed can double in size every week.
This has to be managed as too much biomass can block the light, negatively affecting growth.
“When they are at the right stage … we harvest them daily at the same rate as the growth rate, and have a sustained production cycle,” Meller said.
At the third stage the seaweed is processed with the goal to preserve the integrity and bioactivity of the active compounds.
The facility has a commercial freeze drier to process seaweed, but Meller said this process changes the integrity of material and up to half of the bioactives can be lost.
CH4 Global has filed IP on another process that preserves the integrity of compounds.
The other process is followed at a South Australian site.
The fourth stage is formulation and packaging, with the goal of putting a stable product in farmer’s hands.
Formulation and packaging is done in Australia.
“The hard part of business is turning something into a product that fits the purpose of the market, at the right price,” Meller said.
He said they need to sell methane-reducing products to farmers at a price that allows farmers to still make money, likely by getting a modest premium for the protein they sell.
A reasonable feed savings and the value of carbon on top of this should “add up to put money in farmer’s pockets”.
The Bluff facility has been in production for two and half years and has 10 staff members.
Some have aquaculture backgrounds, with others doing more manual labour.
CH4 global wants to add “analytical capability” to staff soon, as samples are currently sent overseas for specific types of analysis.
The site has a 300,000 litre capacity, with room to expand.
Meller said the Bluff site will never be a large-scale facility as it will not have large ponds to grow seaweed.
This is mainly because the water in Southland is too cold.
Heating water is also one of the site’s biggest challenges.
The site is there to provide products to commercial partners and will in all likelihood always operate, he said.
