Ocean Rainforest has closed a Series-A investment round of USD 6.2 million. The funding round will enable further expansion of operations in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Eastern Pacific Rim, and accelerate product and market development.

Ocean Rainforest is a seaweed cultivation and processing company based in the Faroe Islands, Europe, and California, USA. Since 2010, the company has developed a proven “first of its kind” open ocean cultivation system and has consistently remained suitable for real offshore conditions in the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Today the company is among the largest commercial seaweed cultivators in Europe and has obtained the first-ever offshore seaweed cultivation permit in United States federal waters located offshore of Santa Barbara, CA.

The new investment funding allows Ocean Rainforest to scale up seaweed production to supply the functional food and feed markets leveraging existing company facilities in the Faroe Islands while expanding its operations in California.

Marc von Keitz, director at the Grantham Foundation, said: “We are excited about Ocean Rainforest’s capabilities to successfully grow seaweed in open ocean environments. This funding will significantly expand their production into off-shore waters and will be critical to meet growing market demand and to reach climate-relevant scale.”

The funding was led by The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment who invested alongside Katapult Ocean’s Deep Blue fund, Builders Vision and the Ocean Born Foundation. Existing shareholders World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US), Norðoya Íløgufelag and Twynam Invest also participated in this Series A round.

“With limited environmental impacts and a low carbon footprint, seaweed absorbs CO2 and other excess nutrients from the ocean, making this fast-growing crop a climate-smart and nutritious food source,” said Paul Dobbins, Senior Director of Impact Investing at World Wildlife Fund – US. “But seaweed can only thrive as a climate change solution if we create a market for the many food, feed and fossil-based replacement products seaweed can provide. Ocean Rainforest is addressing the feed market and their successful capital raise shines a spotlight on this growing opportunity.”

Olavur Gregersen, Co-founder and CEO of Ocean Rainforest, said: “We are delighted that our existing shareholders as well as the new highly renowned investors within the sustainable ocean and climate impact contributed to the success of this financing round. The investment enables us to scale up operations in the Faroe Islands and continue to commercialize our cultivation and processing activities of Giant Kelp in California. Furthermore, we will investigate possibilities for replication of our business model in collaboration with local partners in specific locations in Europe and North America.”

How does Ocean Rainforest make an impact?

Global shortages of sustainable, healthy feed and food represent among the most pressing challenges of our time. At the same time, the global community is in critical need of highly effective, economically feasible, and immediately accessible strategies to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

Ocean Rainforest intends to address these two challenges through sustainable, large-scale seaweed cultivation. Seaweeds are among the fastest-growing crops on the planet. They only require sunlight, carbon dioxide (CO2), nutrients that are naturally occurring in the ocean, and a substrate to grow on. When this is utilized commercially and scaled up with open ocean cultivation systems, large quantities of CO2 can be absorbed. This activity reduces ocean acidification, mitigates climate change through carbon uptake, and provides other ecosystem services.

Ocean Rainforest wants to demonstrate competitive business models of cultivated seaweed products to meet a growing demand from market segments such as functional food and feed ingredients and additives for multiple nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, biomaterials, beverages, texturing, and medical devices.

About Ocean Rainforest:

Ocean Rainforest’s vision is to create local ocean rainforests around the world. Headquartered in the Faroe Islands, Ocean Rainforest is a leader in offshore seaweed cultivation with fully integrated production from seed to shelf-stable product in the North Atlantic, poised for significant expansion. The company is leading and participating in multiple, international R&D efforts in Europe and the United States to develop and optimize cultivation and processing strategies that will allow competitive supply of this sustainable biomass into a variety of products. Ocean Rainforest has also established a U.S subsidiary in Southern California, where it recently obtained an R&D permit for seaweed cultivation in federal waters, a critical step towards establishing commercial scale production and processing in the Eastern Pacific.

About The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment:

The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment is a private charitable foundation based in Boston, with a mission to protect and conserve the natural world via a broad range of scalable, but often neglected, climate solutions. The Foundation believes the world needs innovation and commercialization of new technologies. Along with environmental philanthropy, it makes investments in building green industries and systems.