Finally I was at an algae farm harvesting! Why “finally”? Well, everything actually turned out a little different than originally planned, but “finally” it all came to a good end:
I was already on my way to Norway at the end of April when I received the information that my stay on the farm would be delayed by almost a week. But I’m flexible and then first moved to our hytte on the fjord in the south for a few days before I traveled to Bergen. There is always something to do there and during this time I also made another attempt to set up a company in Norway. However, that is another story and will be described in another post.
Anyway, I arrived (finally) in the Bergen region in early May and already on the first day I got the full blast with a very early start at 4am at the farm. This was due to the announced worsening of the weather during the day. So we left while it was still dark and I tried to find my way around on board. The others had already been there for a few days and were therefore more experienced. My first position was at the filling station. This is actually the last station in the entire harvesting process, where the cut and crushed algae are filled into large tanks with a mixture of seawater and acid. This stabilizes the algae and stops rapid decay. There are, of course, other methods of stabilization. However, it is always important that the algae are only exposed to the air in their original state for as short a time as possible. After a few hours, they would have deteriorated to the point of no use. The algae stabilized in this way are used as a feed additive in livestock farming, where they ensure that antibiotics in the feed can be halved and the animals’ methane emissions are reduced.
The next few days started at 6am and sometimes went late into the evening. The time window for the algae harvest is relatively small and you have to take advantage of the good weather conditions – as best you can. From the third day I was in a boat with a colleague to unhook the lines, which are then pulled up by the machine for processing the algae. Of course, I really liked that, since this time it was at the first station of the harvesting process. I was therefore able to gain experience at the two most labor-intensive places in the whole process. And I gained quite a lot… I felt like the whole harvesting process was a bit overdesigned, for example. Everything is very large and relatively complicated. And with a lot of people at work. I think there is still a lot of optimization potential. But we all agreed on that. We’ll see what the future brings!
I would like to thank Ocean Forest AS from Lerøy AS (another major food manufacturer in Norway) for letting me meet them and I hope we can establish a working relationship in the near future!!!