When Tane Bradley was a little boy, his schoolteacher mother and her boyfriend relocated the family south in search of seaweed after returning from a working vacation on organic farms. Nearly three decades later, Tane and his wife Clare Bradley operate the business once known as Ocean Organics, now AgriSea, which creates liquid concentrates from the local seaweed Ecklonia Radiata. According to Kate Green’s article, they just received a $750,000 loan from the government’s Regional Strategic Partnership Fund.
Tell me how seaweed is used in agriculture.
In the main industries, which include horticulture, dairy farming, apple and kiwifruit orchards, and everything else that grows, our goods are predominantly used.
All seaweeds include nutrients, growth-promoting agents, amino acids, and complex carbohydrates, however, not all seaweeds are created equal. There are roughly 1000 species in Aotearoa.
It is decided to use brown kelps in agriculture. Methods of extraction and fermentation make sure the nutrients are kept for usage by the soil, plants, and animals.
We stumbled onto our beekeeping product by chance. We discovered that beekeepers were purchasing one of our items intended for dairy cows to feed their bees while they were being fed sugar syrup.
According to research, Ecklonia Radiata includes bioactives that can heal gastrointestinal problems and parasites in bees.
How was AgriSea founded?
This company was founded in 1996 by Tane’s mother and her business partner as Ocean Organics. They worked on organic farms throughout the summer as South Auckland school teachers, and one of the farms stood out for its excellence and used seaweed as its primary input.
They returned and did a further investigation after being fascinated by the potential of seaweed. Since they were aware of the demand, they sold their home, loaded up their van, and relocated to the Paeroa.
The days when we could see our consumers by driving about in a day have long since passed after 26 years.
From wine producers to beekeepers, we provide to sectors in the United States, Canada, Italy, and Australia. Autumn sales have climbed by 200% year over year, and farmer uptake has improved as a result of our new relationship with Farm Source.
There are presently around 40 employees. Every day of the week, the six of us used to make lunch together. Even if we only cook on Wednesdays anymore, we are still a way.
How do you ensure the sustainability of your methods?
Our environment serves as our life support system, but it is having difficulty doing so. You can only operate under a take-and-make-waste model for so long.
We take care not to remove all of the seaweed that washes ashore since a different ecology depends on it.
Seaweed is manually collected by our local collectors under the direction of the Ministry of Primary Industries; the supply chain can be challenging and unreliable.
But we must take a more circular approach if we want to maintain a strong life support system for future generations.
Does seaweed provide any advantages for individuals as well?
We have always understood that we wanted to create something for people. Everyone anticipates that it will taste fairly fishy, and various processing techniques can bring out that flavour; believe us, there have been some disastrous efforts.
We received a high-value nutrition grant in 2021 to investigate several techniques for fermenting seaweeds. We sampled a variety of species before settling on one that, in our opinion, tastes alright.
Brown seaweed has a flavour that is fairly sweet, almost like salted caramel, since it contains a lot of long-chain mannitol carbohydrates. We believe we’ve found one with a good iodine level that isn’t overpowering.
Our three children have always understood they are not permitted juice without their seaweed, thus we all consume seaweed as a family.
These are particularly abundant in sulfated polysaccharides, complex carbohydrates only found in brown kelps. Otago University is now doing consumer testing on the formulation.
Next, what?
There are thousands of species of seaweed still to be discovered, but we now only use one. Not just for AgriSea but also for Aotearoa New Zealand and our economy, the prospects are limitless.
Seaweed does not have roots; instead, it absorbs nutrients from the ocean. We’re engaged in a pioneering bioremediation project that involves running water from the Waihou River via a unique seaweed-ponding system.
It cleans up the water by absorbing nitrogen and phosphorus. The seaweed may subsequently be transformed into agriculture fertilizer.
Our innovative animal supplement line, which is the first for dairy cows to lower levels of oxidative stress—the primary cause of disease—and nitrogen excretion, which might have a significant positive impact on our water quality—won a Fieldays Innovation Award.
We also collaborated with Southward Gin, a neighbourhood distillery in Wellington. It turns out that seaweed was a fantastic technique to bring out the drying properties of the gin. They just launched a dry vodka and are currently developing a whiskey.
Being able to use the phrases “seaweed” and “hi-tech” in the same sentence is just the beginning. Winning the Hi-Tech Mori business of the year was a compliment to our staff and partners.
