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"How did we end up farming kelp and exporting it to EU agriculture?"

January 24, 2025

When we started Kelpinor I didn’t just want to build a company. I wanted to redefine what the kelp industry could look like. My granduncles did kelp trawling from the 70’s to around 2005. I therefore grew up knowing that kelp could be used for more or less everything; food, fertilizer, medicine and even plastic. What really spiked my kelp interest, was when I understood that the kelp could be farmed and not only trawled.

“Now that is what I wanna do with my life”, I thought. 

Who am I?

Before co-founding Kelpinor, I spent my years from 15 to 19 as an apprentice in the powder coating industry. I still remember the delight from evenly coating variable surfaces, and the smile from happy and recurring customers. I also learned firsthand the challenges from working in a 350+ people organization, and how to fix problems as soon they arise. After that, I did my bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and dropped out of my master at NTNU School of Entrepreneurship. I had no time for that diploma, since Kelpinor was already born.

The name “Kelpinor” was born after a couple of late night beers at our tiny office on campus. I first thought about a Norwegian name (Tara), but would that work as well in English? Of course we would be global, so I thought alright let’s use “kelp” as our base. Not only that, but we would be based in northern Norway. Therefore, something with “north”, “in north”, “nor”, “inor” could work. And there we have it. “Kelpinor”. I bought .com and .no straight away and popped a new beer. Kelpinor it was.

The Birth of Kelpinor

In 2022, Christoffer, Johan, Ole Jørgen and I sat down with one goal: to build something that would truly make a difference in the seaweed industry. We wanted to enable the future through seaweed. 

We noticed that the industry lacked efficient production systems, and we knew there had to be a better way. The first year went to trying to fix that problem, based on the technology I co-wrote my bachelor thesis on. There was only one problem: the customers for our product did not need it - because there were not enough sales of seaweed to defend an investment in a technology like that. Lesson learned: do your own market research and get the “no” from customers as soon as possible.

But, we did not give up that easily - we just looked for a new place to fix problems. 

Next up was answering the question: “How hard can it be to sell the seaweed, then?”. This we painfully experienced through trying to sell our first 15 tonnes of seaweed, co-farmed with Salten Algea, as dried spices. Fæsk-kjerringa and Easyfish took the chance on us, but we understood that having a couple of kg sales would not make us profitable. In addition, Lofoten Seaweed and Tekslo have done an excellent job in this niche market - and therefore we needed to look somewhere else for gold. 

In the fall of 2023, a segment called biostimulants were brought to our attention. Our market developer dived into this, and found a curious and experienced company called Snoek GmbH in Germany. Snoek wanted to develop the next generation of biostimulants, and Kelpinor have the grit and creativity to help innovate. Half a year after, May 2024, Snoek guided our team to produce and supply with our first 1000L’s of product.

One month later the CEO Wilhelm called and said that he could take another 2000L’s when we had it ready. I could not believe it. What level of trust is this? Throughout the fall of 2024 our relationship strengthened - and we are going into the future together as partners. The year ended with Snoek ordering yet another 5000L’s of Kelpinor Ascophyllum Suspension.

In my head, this just happened overnight. It is not true that it was over night though. This was a result of my team of engineers, scientists, biologists, business developers - and friends - staying true to being trustworthy, unafraid and new-thinking. Those three values are our compass on the road towards enabling the regenerative future.

My thoughts on where the agriculture is heading

We’re at an exciting yet critical juncture in the agricultural industry. The rapid pace of global warming and its consequences are impossible to ignore. There is more extreme weather, drought, flood and temperature swings. This makes it nearly impossible for farmers to sleep during night, as the crops are put through enormous amounts of abiotic stress. As it was not bad enough that our soil qualities are getting poorer, the need for food increases with population and price for fertilizers skyrockets.

At Kelpinor, we’re not just reacting to these changes—we’re helping to drive forward adaptions to them. We make a specific niche of nutrients from fjords available to soil through our Kelpinor Suspension. Algae have been around for billions of years, and have learned to adapt to the environment changing. The traits developed over these years are exactly what we are bringing to our customers.

We are not done yet

As I look at what we’ve accomplished and where we’re going, I couldn’t be more proud of the team and community we’ve built. Together, we’re not just developing and supplying Kelpinor Suspension - we’re enabling the regenerative future of agriculture - and this will be a long road. 

If you would like to learn more about us, check out our website and follow me on LinkedIn.

Best,
Hermann

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