The Paxtier Podcast
The Paxtier Podcast
Scaling Offshore Windfarms and Seaweed | Arctic Seaweed
Matthias Boeing is a Strategic Advisor at Arctic Seaweed, a seaweed company developing disruptive technology to revolutionize the macroalgae cultivation industry.
Arctic Seaweed recently entered into an MoU with Simply Blue Group, an offshore wind developer, in a bid to investigate farming seaweed alongside offshore wind farms.
In this episode of The Paxtier Podcast, Matthias reveals all about scaling these two industries in unison. He also breaks down various challenges facing the industry and his biggest mistakes.
That is a very interesting partnership that we have been working on quite some time. For us we believe that if we talk about volume There's no way around this multi-purpose, co-location type of projects with offshore wind because the space that is available there is just enormous compared to nearshore. Governments increasingly ask for a more sustainable way of using the space. making sure that you, you have some other local benefits to the environment, but also to the economy. So it becomes a license to operate and then all of a sudden this matches quite well. We need space to grow a lot of seaweed with volume. We have existing structures that we can utilize in the ocean. This is gonna be huge topic to get offshore wind farms approved. And in the end, we strongly believe this is the pathway to get to these 8 million tons that we want
Peter:Hey guys, welcome to the Paxtier podcast. It's currently zero degrees in the middle of summer. And raining. Right. And Enrico, and I have a very special episode for you today with Arctic seaweed and Matthias. We had a really far reaching conversation talking about modularity, offshore wind farming.
Enrico:The specifics of how cultivation changes, according to the line diameter that you're using. And seeding. Yeah mechanization And, we dived quite deep into their partnership with Simply Blue Group, which is an offshore wind farm developer. I think one of my favorite things he said was he goes, I've always wanted to be a farmer. So putting something in the water and then coming back a month later and suddenly there's something there. Yeah. That's something I really relate to. He is a really fun guy and I would totally recommend following him on all social media channels. It was such a great chat. Without further ado, let's dive straight underwater and get to grips with Arctic Seaweed and seaweed cultivation.
Peter:Mathias great to have you on. It'll be super to hear a little bit more about your journey into the space, because you've been involved with a variety of different aspects of seaweed
Matthias:Yeah.
Peter:ecosystem services. It'd be really good to hear more about that.
Matthias:Yeah. You know, my background is not really kind of ocean or a seaweed in at all. So, you know, I have a typical business background with a masters in strategy and went into consulting like you should after business school and, you know, and did all that grinding work and kind of was in my last position at Porsche in Germany. And I felt I needed a break after a couple of years in the industries. And so I quit my job and sold everything and then I found this NGO in the north of Norway called In The Same Boat and I wrote them and you know, they sail along the coastline of Norway and picking plastic from the ocean. That was just fantastic because I love sailing and I love being on the ocean. And then, yeah, joined them stayed for them with them for eight months, and then I felt like I might want to call this year an ocean sabbatical. And then after working with them, I found Katapult Ocean you know, the venture capital fund here in Oslo. And I joined them as the, you know, Ross, one of the investment directors always keeps saying I'm the most overqualified intern. But I just wanted to learn about ocean Impact and investing, what is out there and in that job, I first heard from Seaweeds because they obviously were screening many, many companies that were in the seaweed space. And I looked at it and I'm, I'm like, hell, this is, this is a crazy kind of crop, you know, it, it kind of checks this industry kind of checks so many kind of mega trends that we are working with. And, you know, and I thought this is a space that I wanna be involved in. So I have two friends, one from Germany, one from Norway, and we started talking about seawood and what we could do, and then we were like, yeah, we all have business degrees. We have not really any kind of experience biologically wise to grow seaweed. So we thought about what we could do is kind of this ecosystem approach, right? So the ecosystem service approach, where we built this marketplace where companies like seaweed companies can kind of get a value stamp on the ecosystem services that they produce for the ocean and kind of make this into a sellable product. And then we started doing that. We started doing kind of the first you know, that's called these MVPs and, you know, started talking to the seaweed side. They obviously were very, very interested in the ecosystem service part because all of the seaweed companies have that in their business model. We also started talking to salmon companies because we wanted them on the other side of the platform. But we realized quite early that we were, we were early for the industry, right? The in sea with industry itself is still very young, even though it has been around for, for a long while, but it's still quite young in the end. But through that time we met Kim, the c e o of Arctic seaweed. And he, he was a fun guy to, to join and he said, you know, do you want to go? You guys want to come to a harvest or a seeding? And I love working for free in harsh conditions. So I said, yeah. And then during that time, I joined them for my first my first harvest in Bergen. Went back for the seeding. I went back for the harvesting next year, and then Kim and me started talking more about, okay, what Matt, here's your background from strategy and and management consulting. Isn't there something we could use at Arctic seaweed? And then we started working on Arctic seaweed's, you know, scale up strategy and, you know, what, what do we want to be as Arctic seaweed one and a half years ago. And that was kind of the start with Arctic seaweed. So long story short kind of by accident, but really fell in love with the kind of characteristics of the industry, which fits so many kind of mega trends that we need to work on. And then just stick with it. And then some things just came together, you know, meeting Kim and meeting Arctic seaweed and making that jump to work for free on a boat.
Peter:How far is Arctic seaweed from you at the moment?
Matthias:Far in terms of distance?
Peter:Distance, yeah.
Matthias:Yeah, I mean, right now I'm based in Oslo. Arctic seaweed is so the Kim is living in Flekkefjord, which is in the south, which is around four hours drive, but the operation with the farm is in Bergen, which is another five hour drive from here. So it's it is a bit of a stretch, but
Peter:It's funny how it works, I guess.'cause Kim was also one of the first people I ever spoke to in the seaweed space,'cause when I started out I had a company called Blue Tech Base and that was just interviews. Wow. And he was one of the first, and we spoke about at length, about the industry Wow. And what he was targeting. And I guess that leads onto my next question, which is around the focus of Arctic seaweed now. Yeah. Obviously you mentioned mega trends, but in terms of Arctic seaweed, what are you guys working on and what's next? Yeah.
Matthias:That's a very good question. I mean as I said, Kim and me have been working quite hard for over a year now on kind of positioning the company for what we want to be and who we want to be and how we can contribute to the, to the industry.
Peter:Because the vision that we have is to enable the industry to be sustainable and sustainable, not only from a natural ecosystem perspective, but also from a financial and, you know, business model perspective. Because I think everybody would agree that the industry still has to show that it, it is there to stay, right? It, it can still all fail and be a big hype for a couple of years. So we want, as a vision to enable the industry. And we realized quite early that that often. Only comes through volume, right? So we believe that the volumes are too small to make this into a sophisticated industry where investments come in, where, you know, big food conglomerates come in, where fertilizer companies come in, where feed companies come in. So our mission is, is, is to produce volume, because I think that is what the industry needs. We need to have predictable volume in the industry so that, you know a nestler and aler and you know, a Unilever can expect megatons of seaweed every year. And then we said, okay, if our mission is volume, we want two strategies within Arctic seaweed. We realize that we will not be able to build, produce this all ourselves, but we say, okay, we have our farm technology which we believe is our core competitive advantage. we come from the tech side. We used that tech on our own farms in in around Bergen. But then we realized, okay, we also want to enable the industry by giving access to the tech, to other companies because again, the industry, we will not make the industry survive alone. We need other companies also to bring that volume up and help us also to survive as arctic seaweed. So we developed this concept and, you know, and I come from the software world, so I called or we called the seaweed as a service not software as a service where we give access to our technology, to our know-how, to our experience through this concept where people are you know, buying some parts of the farm and only leasing some of the other parts of the farm. And also kind of agree on a buyback agreement for volume. And by that we believe that we ultimately can, you know, grow our own seaweed and be a significant seaweed producer, but also enable other companies that come up everywhere. You know, there's so many seaweed companies coming up every, every month even to enable them to grow seaweed to the same kind of quality, with the same kind of know-how that we've built up over the last six, seven years.
Enrico:Could you possibly expand more on the tech that makes Arctic Seaweed stand out? What is it about your cultivation system that is so you know, Innovative?
Matthias:Yeah, so I mean, we, from the beginning we had some beliefs when it came to scale, right? So when we started, or when Kim started, I mean, I came only in one and a half years ago, but when Kim and the team started, they always had in mind this kind of. Industrialized scaling of the industry, right? So what they build is right away in a mindset that it has, has to be automated and mechanized as as much as possible. Without that, we will never be able to compete on the labor costs with, you know, low, low income countries in Asia. So our entire processing line, our harvesting, our seeding is, is automated and mechanized. We also built this very modular, so a farm structure from Arctic seaweed looks like a very modular, industrialized, kind of compact system. Which is good because we obviously want to extend farms where we are, right? So if we have a partner right now in Greenland, you know, if they have these ramp up curves that we give them, they just extend by modules, right? And this is a very good way of scaling up a farm structure if you have these modules that you can just extend and, you know, add to existing modules. We also build the farm so that it is kind of customizable to different kinds of locations so you can submerge the farm to different levels. So for example, you, if we grow seaweed in Greenland, it might need a different types of depth than in Norway or in island, right? So, and also depending on the species. So the farm structure is, is, is made to kind of modular and customize to where you have deployed it. You can even put it all the way down to under 50 meters. So if you, if you want in the summer to not let anything grow, you just set it down to 50 meters and leave it there. Nothing will grow under 50 meters. And if you, I think if you look at it from a a design perspective, it's also over dimension. For near shore operations, we already, you know, the entire system is over dimension to kind of function in also more severe con, you know, conditions. Like, for example, now in Greenland, the whole system was frozen over by sea ice. And we were quite afraid, or Kim had quite a lot of sleepless nights that when, you know, winter breaks and the ice breaks that the farm is gone. But it was there, it was still there and it was in one piece and it looked very fine. Nothing, nowhere wear and tear on it. So we kind of got it ice class proof.
Peter:It sounds like a Hollywood movie.
Matthias:Yeah. I mean, we, our partner, you know, promised us that the, no, this bay is never gonna freeze and froze. And yeah, that was but it's a good test. I mean, this is what the industry needs. We need to test stuff and see if something works or not. But maybe one more thing to add, and I think that's kind of the, probably the most key to the scale of, of our farming system is that we base everything on direct seeding. We strongly believe that the only way to get to the volumes that, you know, we keep repeating 8 million tons in 2030, you know everybody's quoting that number if we want to do that. We believe it's only gonna go through direct seeding because the the benefits of direct seeding compared to twine seeding, we believe outweigh you know, the predictability right now. Yes, twine right now is very predictable. It gives you predictable yields. It is very kind of, it's a proven methodology, but the input factors, the hatchery size, the water, the electricity, the size of the spools, this is gonna be tricky to put in a 6,000 hectare offshore wind farm. So, you know, the direct seeding technology that we've, we've developed, we believe is the, is the one that that will enable the scale that we all want and need.
Peter:So the average lay person, what does direct seeding look like?
Matthias:Well, direct seeding means, so you have the two different types of seeding, right? Let's start with twine. With Twine, you produce a little plant in the hatchery on land for a couple of weeks. And the plant obviously grows already to a certain size, and then that plant grows on a little line. And that line will then be put on a spool that is that size sometimes, and then you bring that on board of a vessel, and then you put that line with a little plant on a, on a bigger rope. What direct seeding does is we are producing very, very, very tiny plants that are in a, in a solution. And basically millions of spores fit into one bottle of water and we then directly seed on board of the vessel that we use onto the line. Which means that, you know, we can, if we have 6,000 hectare farm in in an offshore wind farm, an island that is maybe just a bucket load of, of seed that can be installed in an offshore wind offshore wind vessel, whereas the twine seeding for 6,000 hectare would be enormous job to, to logistically, you know, manage and kind of produce. So I'm not sure if that is idiot proof, but, uh, yeah.
Peter:Enrico, what were you gonna ask?
Enrico:It opens up a lot of questions I have. Yeah. When it comes to direct seeding about how do you make, how do you ensure that they actually attach, are you maintaining a specific temperature? I know that it's, you have to get the conditions perfect, right? To get a good attachment rate.
Matthias:Yes. And this is exactly where you currently put the challenges for us, right? So again, twine seeding gives you very predictable yields. It is, it is. Easier to, to use which is good at the moment because now it's good to show predictable yields, but we are working on that difficult part to figure out, okay, what is the right density to, to see it with on the, on the line? What is the right line structure, you know? So we have always tests and trials with different kinds of systems, different kinds of densities, different kinds of line space in between, because our aim is to mimic the predictability of twine. And that is a different, that, that's the challenge, and I'm not a biologist by, by, by any means. But we have come now very close to kind of the yield numbers that Twine is producing. And I think we talk a lot with our, with our partners or other seaweed companies. And they all agree that, you know, the scale is probably has to come from, from direct seeding because the economic factors are just different compared to Twine. But you know, we use a glue, for example, that is based on seaweed that goes onto the line after we seed the line on, you know on our machine. So there is different ways to make the stick and the different ways to kind of, to deploy it. But again, this is exactly the challenge that we face to, to mimic the predictability and the yield of twin combined with the scalability of direct seed. Mm-hmm.
Peter:We've touched on a lot of different points there, and I think that also lends us up to the next avenue of questions, which is around the algae, the seaweed industry in general. Where do you see the seaweed industry going in the next five, 10 years? And what major roadblocks are we having to overcome on that journey?
Matthias:That's, that's a very good question. It's probably the most important question of For the industry. Like I think the industry is at this stage now where, you know, I think people would call this the death valley part, you know, so we have shown that the industry can create some companies that seem to be solid. But we've also seen that now companies that have no pathway to profitability to through scale or et cetera I'm not gonna make it right. So they are the first companies that are declaring bankruptcy. And this obviously has an impact on the mood in the industry because before that, it was all shine and, you know, gold and whatever. So now that the industry's actually in quite dangerous place in the sense that most industries, new industries are in this kind of death valley. So I think what we need to show in the industry in the next five years is that again, we are able to produce predictable volumes because otherwise the buyer side will not jump on this. You know, if Orkla, if a, if a Nestlé doesn't know that they get predictable megatons of delivery every year, they will not produce anything with seaweed because they, it's, it's too risky for them. So that is one of the major challenges, getting predictable volumes up for the industry to get the buyer side in. I think also one of the next five years, what we will see is a lot more collaboration in the industry. Because we, I think we already started reaching out to our, you know, other seaweed companies and, you know, there are a lot out there and what is now needed that we might have to do a bit of specialization. So not everybody needs to do everything. So maybe some companies are very good at one thing and the other ones are very good at the other thing. And then some kind of cooperative working models might come up. Yeah, so I think that is, that is kind of the biggest challenges in the next five years. And it's, the industry is not out of the woods, you know, it's it can still go all wrong. But I think we internally in arctic seaweed, we call this the perfect storm for for seaweed because the, you know, the mega trends are all pointing towards it. There's actually no way around, you know, diversifying our food sources, our, you know, we need to produce something that doesn't require water, fertilizer, you know, it's, it, it fits so well into this. It is the perfect storm, but we still need to make it work. And that is the next five years I think.
Enrico:So I've also heard that finding buyers who confirm their purchases is actually quite difficult. Do you have anything to say about that?
Matthias:I mean for us in Arctic seaweed, we were quite lucky to get Orkla as an investor on board quite early, or not early, but a couple of years back. So we have a very good partner to kind of collaborate with on, you know, we learned so much from them. What do they need to accept seaweed, you know, what kind of processing, what kind of food standards and food grade, et cetera do, do we need to produce? So that was a very good thing for us. And I think the collaboration with Okla is, is fantastic. And then they are a front runner in this kind of industry to, to be maybe that one company that wants mega tons. I think it is. It depends a bit in which kind of parts you're looking. I think on the food side, I would probably agree that it is quite difficult to find somebody buying megatons of food trade seaweed right now. If you don't have an investor that is named ala. But if you look at, for example, other companies like in the bio-refinery area we actually see that they're, they struggle to find seaweed that they can use because of the price, because they started out with a very low price in those, you know, for those applications. And we now see them moving the price up because they're not able to, to, to buy anything. So, whereas the food grade is so expensive that they want to get it down. So I think what we currently see in the market is this leveling out of prices in between some equilibrium. So that some companies, like in the bio-refinery, they need to pay more than six per kilogram. So they maybe go up to 20, whereas the food goes down from 30 to 25 to 23 and you know, and then all of a sudden you can think about, yeah. Is it maybe better to produce for bio-refinery instead of food because we can produce more yield and Yeah. So I think it is, the market is balancing it out a bit. But we strongly believe that we think the market is a given over the time we, at Arctic Seaweed we think there will be a market. If we make sure that there is predictable yields and predictable volume, we will have a market for it. Mm-hmm. So I'm, I'm not concerned about the buyer side, but we need to fix that volume predictability. So that they, you know, and then maybe like a cooperative might become super interesting because just imagine you have a collaborative where all of the volumes from all of Europe come together and you, you know, this has happened before in other industries. So
Peter:yeah. Tell us more about cooperative model. You mentioned it a few times now. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this and other industries as well that have really benefited from that.
Matthias:Well, I mean, it's, it's, I had a chat with somebody on the, from the investor side in in Trondheim on the Seagriculture Conference, right. And he actually pointed that out to us and he was like, you know, you guys need to, you don't need to put companies together and kind of, you know, buy each other up and make a big seaweed company. What you need to do is this, you know, cooperative approach that you've seen in agriculture already. Where, where farmers maybe, you know, build a co-op and put their volumes together to be a better you know, negotiation partner towards the buyer side. So I think maybe that isn't exactly what, what this industry also needs because if you have diversified your volume production either by location or by company or by seeding methodology or whatever, you know, that there might be you know, there is never gonna be a failure in all of those. So if our Bergen farm has a problem because the seed stock was not enough, Greenland might still produce a lot of seaweed and then, you know, you can, you can de-risk the volume. Throughout Europe. And for that you don't need to own the farms for that. You build a co-op with these companies that you are putting all your volumes together and then, you know, go out and sell this.
Peter:But there must be challenges to this co-operative model, including, for example, sharing information.
Matthias:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is it's not easy. This requires trust. This requires a lot of kind of coordination. You know, somebody needs to run that cooperative. Again, the standards are not the same in the industry. We see this all over the place when, you know, people report the numbers that they produce. You know, we, for example, say it is wet weight. Others say it's dry weight. You know? Okay. So then a hundred tons all of a sudden becomes a. 30 tons dry weight, you know, but you, you, you look at the other company and then they say, we produce a hundred tons. And you're like, oh yeah, but this is not the same. Right? So there's a lot of standardization needed to be able to do something like a co-op. You know, the quality has to be the same because again, food produces, they need good quality and predictable quality and to a certain standard. So there is a lot of standardization needed for, for a step like that. And also, maybe one more, one more add. We actually look a lot towards investors driving this because we think that there are some investors out there that have a lot of stake in the industry. And I think they are often the ones that also start kind of building these blocks together, right? Because if an investor is invested in a couple of seaweed companies, they want them to survive. And if they, if they understand what is missing to make them survive, they might kind of buy that and put this together. And, you know, so it might come from the investor side that this push for collaboration or corporation, or whatever you wanna call it, is driven by investors invested in the di in the same companies.
Peter:With your background with Katapult and business, but also with Arctic seaweed, why did these companies fail recently? And what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. And how can we prevent that?
Matthias:That's a, it's a very good question. I mean it's a very hard job to run a company and make it survive. So first of all, I think all of these companies did a fantastic job on their part. I've been visiting them and talking to them and it's, it is sad to see companies you know, not succeeding in that way. But I think it's a bit what I said in the beginning that if we can't kind of find a way to get to some kind of scale mm-hmm. That the business economics will not work. And the companies are obviously, supported by investors that often look at, you know, how can we get profitability and sustainability in a balance, right? And that is still a huge challenge. We can even make seaweeds unsustainable, right? and I mean, ecologically unsustainable. Mm-hmm. So, you know, not, not, it's not just growing seaweed by the millions will, will help us. It can create some bad stuff too, but we need to balance this. We need to also get a way to, to kind of scale a company to make it sustainable, both financially and from a biological and environment perspective. And I think some of the companies struggle to get on this scaling track. Again, I come from the business side and I understand economic economies of scale and you know, that this is a very important thing. So I think we need to find a balance between that now. But again, one other thing is industries, as young as this, there will always be companies that will not make it. Always, it is very natural and normal. And it's also good from a economic, you know, economics perspective that companies don't survive. They are not supposed to survive if they don't have a a way to kind of profitability or, you know. Exactly. So it's it's not it's sad for the individuals, but it is a very normal step also.
Enrico:So, what can you tell us about your partnership with Simply Blue? Yeah. And the direction that you guys are
Matthias:taking with that? That is a very interesting partnership that we have been working on quite some time. For us we believe that if we talk about volume and I mean the number 8 million always pops up, right? we believe that if we talk about these volumes, I. There's no way around this kind of multi-purpose, multi co, co-location type of projects with offshore wind to other stuff, because the space that is available there is just enormous compared to nearshore where you have competition with other aquaculture, where you have competition with, you know, shipping lanes, et, et cetera. So we thought in the beginning of this project that the, our system is based on a very industrialized type of platform, and that this is what offshore wind companies want. Right? Offshore wind companies, technically they don't want us there, let's be honest. Yeah. Because they have no interest in the seaweed or the money that it produces. It's not that they're looking for they just want to be, you know, undisturbed in operating the wind farm and, you know, but what they need is they, you know, governments increasingly ask for kind of a more sustainable way of using the space. You know, making sure that you, you have some other local benefits to the environment, but also to the, to the economy. So it becomes a license to operate, to have seaweed in them, and then all of a sudden this matches quite well. We need space to grow a lot of seaweed with volume. We have existing structures that we can utilize in the ocean. We have offshore support vessels that we can, you know, put our direct seeding and harvesting lines on, on our production lines. but there are obviously huge challenges with it that we need to figure out now. But then Simply Blue Group, they understand this kind of logic that I just described, right? they are not an operator of, of wind farms. They are a developer company. So they are basically putting these projects together and financing it and finding partners to, to operate, et cetera. And they understand that this is gonna be a huge topic to, to kind of get offshore wind farms approved. And so for us, this is kind of the entryway into the offshore wind operator side. That helps us a lot to kind of convince you know, the, Orsted or Vattenfall or, you know, shell or total whoever runs these, these, these wind farms to, to, to think about seaweed. I think that partnership with Simply Blue Group is, is perfect for that because they are very well known in the industry. They have around 60 gigawatts of you know of installations in the pipeline. It also gives us some time to develop more because yes, this is gonna be looking very different in 2030. You know how we will, how do we harvest 6,000 hectares of seaweed offshore? And nobody has an idea. But we have now a couple of years to figure that out. And I think this runway that we got with this partnership is excellent for that. And it, in the end, we strongly believe this is the only pathway to get to these 8 million tons of volume that we want. This is not gonna be only near shore small farms.
Enrico:For what I've, what I've heard, there's definitely limitations when it comes to nutrients supply and stuff like that, but I'd be,really excited to see what you guys get up to with Simply Blue and Yeah, it sounds really exciting. Peter, do you wanna move on to your favorite part where we we get to ask about the journey and,
Peter:Yeah, why not? Why not Mattias? Haing. How's the puppy?
Matthias:He is she's sleeping. That's good. Oh, perfect.
Peter:Matthias. Something I'd love to ask is around failures and mistakes in your journey. So essentially, what have you, what have been your three biggest mistakes so far, and what have you learned from these?
Matthias:Biggest mistakes in my career or just connected to seaweed
Peter:career and seaweed. You can do a mishmash.
Matthias:Hey,
Enrico:but take your time. There's no rush. I'm so aware. We've just been grilling you for the last 35 minutes. No, take a breath. Like, there's, there's no,
Matthias:this topic is very close to my heart, so I could talk for hours on that. So the three biggest failures this is a tricky one. It's almost like an interview. Now. I need to find failures that can be put into positive terms. No.
Peter:You can restructure it as advice.'cause they're often linked, right? Yeah, exactly.
Matthias:So I think I mean, one of the biggest failures was probably that I stayed in jobs that I probably didn't wanna stay in too long. And finding something that you're really passionate about is I think very, very important. And I think this sounds cheesy and you hear this in every, you know, second podcast probably, but it is that way, you know. And when I quit my job at a very well-known German car manufacturer company people thought I would be crazy and, you know, oh my God, you know, this is a dream job and so many people would love, but that doesn't matter if it's not, if it's not for you and if you want to do something else. And the advice is to kind of just believe that something will come out. You know, I started picking plastic on a sailboat in Norway and now I'm in Oslo working with, with seaweed and some other stuff with other companies. So there will always be something coming out of this. And you never know, and I didn't know that I would be working with seaweed four years ago. So that, that is, I think advice to just trust, trust the process, and do some stuff that you normally haven't done before. I think biggest failures, and I, failures is a strong word, but like being too early is sometimes also a problem. Like with Blue Seas, for example, our, you know, ecosystem service from seaweed startup we were not seeing that we were too early for the industry, right? the underlying industry, the seaweed industry, Was not developed yet. So all the investors into Blue Seas said, or potential investors said, you know, but your business case just breaks apart if seaweed is not really kicking off. So we didn't have the patience to kind of wait for the industry to, to pick up and then and develop itself. So we actually decided to, to stop the company because it's, it's too early. That could have been done a bit earlier. But you know, sometimes it takes some time to let go from stuff that you're really passionate about. And the third failure, or I think mistake, I probably would've studied something else. Okay. Because I think what, what the, my job today is I never had a very good job description. You know, it's, it was always some problem solving and, you know, it was more methodology than, than. Kind of, you know, I'm not a finance guy, I'm not an accountant or a controller, but it's more like I just fix problems or find solutions or make concepts. And that is nothing you can study, right? So I think if I, my biggest failure was probably to study business because I kind of hate it and love it, but I think you don't need to study business to do what I do, right? So I would've studied something like history or psychology or, or biology or, you know, something that you then can apply and then go into the business world, you know? So I think it's not a failure, but it's a kind of a pathway mistake I did in the, in the beginning, but then again, it was all good for something and you know, it's it's still good that I have that knowledge, but I don't think I would've done this again.
Enrico:Just to add onto that, Can you expand on, just taking the jump saying, right. I actually, I've had enough of working at Porsche and just going, right, it's time to go. Let's go and be a plastic pirate. Yeah. What, how do you build up the courage and how do you just go right, it's time to move on.
Peter:Or just breaking point?
Matthias:Yeah. Well there's definitely some some health in there. So I think your body will tell you if it is time to move on. You can't ignore that for a while. But and I've been always working a lot, you know, as a consultant and I was always very driven to work. But if you work for something that you're not passionate about too much, then it will be hitting your, your health. Whereas now for, for seaweed, when I worked with Kim you know, I work on the weekends with Kim. I go to Flekkefjord on the weekends. I put I took my vacation with my other job and went to work with Kim. And it doesn't feel like a, like a job, right? Yeah. So I think that is when you realize I always had the struggle to accept that a job is just a job. I can't accept that. From my perspective, I spent so much time on something It can't be just a job. I never had this idea of, you know, oh yeah, I do my nine to five and then I go home and then I have my happy life at home. Mm-hmm. For me, work is so important that it has to fit with what I want to work with, with the people and et cetera. So and I think if you don't have that, you will realize that quite soon on, on your psych and mental and, you know yeah. And when I then was on the boat picking plastic on the, on, on the, on the sailboat for the first time I, that it was just obviously a very different type of life, right. I sold everything. I had nothing left. I, the only thing I had was a piano that was with a friend. But apart from that, I always I sold everything. So I think your buddy will tell you.
Peter:Yeah, it's, there's a great quote about this. I forget who says it, but it says something along the lines of, most people have jobs, right? Some people have careers if they're lucky. And then the luckiest of all have, have callings. So you have to pursue that thing at all costs, that North Star. And we see that a lot in this space. Oceans and climate and seaweed,
Matthias:and maybe it is seaweed, you know? Yeah. The the I always wanted to be a farmer, so I had that dream for a long while and I've always been sailing, so it, I think it's not a. It's not by accident that it is something that is farming ocean. So there is something there. It was not just like, oh yeah, seaweed. You know, yeah. And I also wanted to always live in Norway. I mean, and I always wanted to live by the ocean and sometimes now I need to kind of pinch myself that I'm now living here five minutes away from the ocean. Because for me, ocean was always vacation. I always, I as a child, as a, we always went to the North Sea to, for vacation, like for, for 18 years, every summer. So for me, seeing the ocean is vacation. So when I now go to the seaweed farm and I look here on my other screen on, on as on a picture of our seaweed from a drone picture. It almost looks like vacation pictures, but it's a seaweed farm. So I think that is a bit what the body is connecting to it. So yeah, again, it's not an accident that something with the ocean and farming and nature and a physical product, I think that is something very important. Yeah, I've always done PowerPoints and excels and whatever. I love it, but I also hate it at the same time. But producing something where you actually produce something and you put it in your hand and you're like, goshdammit, I threw this into the ocean and this is what happened. You know? And now, now I started growing my own chilies here and then cucumbers, and so I think that there was something inside that was always there. But it had to be triggered. Yeah. And I think this was the moment when the pain was so high that you then just say, oh, come man. Fuck it.
Peter:Completely relate to that. Yeah. Talking of which co you mentioned your current work, I think that's with Konsberg Digital, right? Yes. So there's a lot of efforts there with securing data from vessels on efficiencies. And I'm wondering, considering the application of that for seaweed in particular seaweed cultivation, the data side of it. Have there been any movements on that front from your perspective?
Matthias:I mean, I can tell you, I have been. Constantly in the ears of my boss at Kongsberg Digital telling them, I'm like, oh, we need to do more with seaweed. we need to do sea. They need everything. We need offshore vessels. We need special vessels for harvesting. Like we need the automation systems for big farms. Just imagine 6,000 hectare farm. It has to be managed. and now I actually, you know, Konsberg is is, is a place that is looking into stuff like that. Obviously, because it's an ocean industry, it's, it fits, you know, they do automation and you know, also at Arctic Seaweed, we say that data is one of the scale drivers at some point, not yet. I think it's a bit too early. We have other stuff that is more important, but it will be the. the, what do we say in Germany? It's the cherry on top of the cake. Yeah. You know, it will be the last kind of efficiency gains, like in every industry, right? You normally do the other stuff first, and then data is kind of unlocking more stuff along the way. And if we talk about direct seeding and Enrico, you mentioned it already, that the, you know, it's quite complex. So, and it's a lot of data that we have been gathering since the beginning of our company on the right density, you know, what kind of you know structure we use. So predicting when the best time to harvest is predicting when the best time to deploy is, you know, based on algorithm, algorithms, et cetera. I mean, that's gonna be fantastic. But that is very expensive. That is very hard to, to do. And it's, you know, we need to fix some other stuff first. But I strongly believe that data will play a crucial role at some point in this industry. You know, I dream I keep telling Kim that I'm dreaming of this farm that is, you know, moving up and down automatically based on a sensor tracking nutrients and, you know, and you have an app maybe to see, oh, my farm and Bergen is currently at five meters. Or I can put a push a button, you know, I dunno. But I think there will be at some point a push from these industries also for into seaweed. And we saw this already. Another company you might be familiar with, they are also bankrupt. Or they, I don't, I'm not sure if they're bankrupt, but they're not around anymore. But they, they were maybe a bit too early on that sensor data part of the seaweed industry. But I think there definitely is a place. For, for this, but digitalization normally comes one step after the core feature of the industry have been in place.
Peter:So looking at teams, I mean, we're, we're talking about guys outside your work basically, but some of these other data platforms that are being built to support farmers with site selection, for example. You're, you're thinking it's still, this is something great to build the infrastructure but still be too early
Matthias:No, I don't think it's too early. The only problem is that they will face is exactly the same problem that we had at Blue Seas, right. It's a very tricky timing problem. You can't be too late, but you also can't be too early. So I think it's important to work on this stuff and we can't do it, so somebody else has to do it. But it also, it will require that the industry is again, an industry. That is there to stay. So if you build your entire business case on the ECE industry, investors might be reluctant to invest into you because they will say, I don't know if, you know, if the seed industry doesn't survive, you don't have a business case. So I think we will have to do something there, but it's very tricky to, to to bridge that this is this, this period where your underlying industry is not there yet. Right. Because again, we will not invest in as arctic seaweed in very fancy sensor buoys that are costing millions of NOK because we can't Right. we have to focus on some other stuff right now. Mm-hmm.
Peter:So with Blue Seas, you were providing some sort of accreditations for ecosystem services, right? That was one of the routes.
Matthias:Yeah. So we tried to do, what we tried to do is we said, okay, we believe that ecosystem services from seaweed is a payable service to somebody. So what we did is we quantified the ecosystem service on the seaweed farm for example, for nitrogen and phosphate. We made that into a sellable product where we designed and said, okay, the closer your farm, for example is to a polluter, the more effective the uptake will become, et cetera. So there was this kind of calculation happening in the background, and then we tried to find buyers on the B2C side and the B2B side. So, for example, a salmon farm could say, okay, we put nitrogen and phosphate into the ocean. we pay a certain amount of money to a seaweed farm in the local vicinity of my salmon farm to cycle or recycle that kind of pollution for me. So I support a seaweed company industry and also can show that we've kind of made sure that the, that the nitrogen and faucet that we put into the ocean by excess feeding our, our fish is taken out again. We could also do the same with B2C. we thought about, okay, if you are have a salmon consumption of, I don't know, five kilograms a year of salmon, that is so much nitrogen and phosphate being emitted into the ocean through the process of, you know, making that salmon. So you give x amount of money to a seaweed company where you are kind of located, for example, and this is kind of a very typical marketplace logic between, you know, two players. But it was too early
Peter:too early with, with enough farmers, but also with data, I guess is a big question.
Matthias:No, data's actually quite, quite easy because seaweed companies have to check their plants on nitrogen content and phosphate content. So it's quite, it is quite easy to calculate how much nitrogen and phosphate you take up. We had more struggles on the, on the, for example, salmon side. they, for example, said that, you know, but why would we now put nitrogen and phosphate on the problem table? Because they were only focusing on CO2, right? And we wanted to stay clear from CO2 because seaweed and CO2 is not clear yet. We don't really have a very clear picture of, is it sequestering, how much is it sequestering, et cetera. So we didn't wanna go that path.
Peter:I'm surprised, I'm surprised because nitrogen, phosphate it's seemingly a massive problem for a lot of
Matthias:Yeah, but it's not in the public. It's not in the public eye. Hmm. Not that, not like CO2, right? Everybody's talking about CO2. So the salmon farms we talked to, and there were some major companies in there. They all said, you know, as long as nobody forces us either by public opinion or, or by governments, we are, it's tricky.
Peter:So there was no major pain point with over polluting local sources of water?
Matthias:No. they argued that you No, but we are the, you know, it's in the Atlantic and there's a lot of washing through and, you know, mixing. Yeah. There's no problem with this. So on, on the seaweed side, we had lots of partners already. They were all happy because obviously for them it it is an existing business. It, it's an additional revenue stream on an existing product. Yeah. But yeah, it, it was it was too early.
Peter:That is true. It's timing with, with some of these nutrient markets. Yeah. Feels like it's going that way. Might it might be five, might 10 years. Yeah. Enrico, it looks like you're eager to
Enrico:say something. Nothing. I just, I just couldn't really, I just couldn't believe that they dug in their heels so much. You would've thought that you, you could come to some kind of agreement where you both benefit from the seaweed that's growing. Like, I know. Like there's pretty clear evidence that your seaweed grows when you get runoff from salmon farms and stuff like that. So you would've thought, yeah, something could been worked out. But
Peter:too
Matthias:early, I guess. Some, some salmon companies, I mean, like Leroy they have their own seaweed yeah, ocean forest, right? So they, they see this as a benefit. But I think companies are very worried that they kind of you know point or put up a problem that doesn't exist right now. At least not in the public sphere.
Enrico:Where we
Matthias:had some, where we had some traction was more on the importer side and processing side. So we had we had some interesting talks with a company in Germany that is, is buying salmon and makes that into some products. And they wanted to push this kind of logic onto the salmon producer and say, okay, I want you to do this so that we can put on our packaging, for example that this is a nitrogen phosphate neutral salmon. Right. So, but then it was not the salmon company pushing for it, it was the distributor. Yeah.
Peter:What about literature and books? Any, anything that you'd recommend reading? It could be a magazine, it could be a a fiction book, it could be a nonfiction book that sort of shaped your thinking in the last few years and that you would gift to your younger self.
Matthias:I think it would be Utopia for realists. Yeah, from Bregman, I'm not sure if you know him or the book. Yeah, I know the book. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is a bit utopian, but like the title says, and it's but it, it really opened my eyes a bit on the trends that we are running into and what kind of major shift we will see and need in the way we think about work and maybe around you know, universal basic income. And then, you know, I know that this might sound a bit philosophical, but in the end, you know, it's, it's always, I read this article today about sabbaticals, right? And then because I did also sabbatical and then I was like, would I need a sabbatical if I worked for a passion? My passion, So, and the utopia for real is, is a bit like this because people say like, I need to love your job, but there are so many jobs out there that you will never love and no matter what, right? And then it is something there is not about, I want to work more. It's more about how can we reduce time spent in stupid jobs that we don't want to do anymore. You know, automise them, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Use AI to, but and Bregman, he describes it very well that, you know, the benefit of a universal basic income is that, you know, it frees up time to do something where you really passionate about. And the positive, Ben, the benefits are bigger than the negatives. And of course there are a lot of controversial studies also on the other side. I mean, this has to be studied more, but it really opened my mind a bit more that how work. Supposed to be and what it is supposed to be. Mm-hmm. And again, many, maybe more people would choose a step, like we discussed taking ga going out of a job that you don't like. If you are having the safety net of universal basic income. And I think we need to think about that. we are not supposed to work more. We are supposed to work less. And with work, I mean the work that is the work that you don't do, if you would freely choose, right? Like Arctic Seaweed, I would not call work, right? But these jobs that, you know, I don't wanna name jobs now, but you probably know what I mean. and he, he really points that out that that is a good you know, and we have this chance with artificial intelligence and ChatGPT and AI to, if we use this correctly to free up resources to if spend, right? We might get a universal basic income at some point. Yeah,
Enrico:And I, on a silly, on a silly side note, I know that I was gonna mention that if I was in power, let's say I know that in medieval times in the UK they used to give peasants about 150 holidays a year. Yeah. Just to maintain their motivation.'cause otherwise they just refuse to work. So maybe that's another
Peter:wait, why they gave people massive
Enrico:holidays, like, yeah, no, because the only way they could persuade peasants to keep toiling in the fields and like supplying food to the knights and the castle and stuff like that, which by just giving them loads of holidays,
Matthias:and I mean, we are we not going, we have stuff that happens right now that we would never have expected. Like home office, you know, 10 years ago, companies would've said, oh, are you insane? Yeah, yeah. Maybe you just sit at home. So I think we are on that track a bit. You know, we're not talking about 150 days of vacation, but we're, I think getting to a point where we can do stuff like this more,
Peter:Enrico had a lovely time on holiday, holiday last few weeks, so he's all in favor of
Enrico:never getting back to work again.
Peter:Thinking and time off
Matthias:the point. It's, it's, the point is not never work again, but Yeah. Yeah. It is never work in these shitty jobs that nobody wants to do, but yeah. If you start doing what you love and you're passionate about, then it's not work. Yeah. And then it also doesn't mean that you need to work less. You know, I'm not a, I'm not a big fan of laziness and lying around and doing nothing. I'm very bad with that. But I think we can reduce a lot of these jobs that we don't want to do, and that's work, and we need to work less on that. Mm-hmm. That's enough for now.
Peter:Thank you so much for all this matthias, it's such a pleasure to actually finally catch up with you. Where can people find you? Where's the best place to find you and Arctic Seaweed?
Matthias:I'm a very social media shy person. I have no social media except LinkedIn. It's the last frontier. So I think the best way to contact me is on LinkedIn and also Arctic seaweed. We have not really, we're not very. Vocal and doing a lot of marketing. We started bit now with MOU, with Simply Blue, but we're not very, very present for a reason. We have to focus on something else first. Mm-hmm. But we have a website aseaweed.com not ass seaweed.com where you can, you can find an email address and, you know, but again, I think the easiest way is Kim on LinkedIn, Matthias on LinkedIn. We can also share my telephone number or whatever. I'm I'm very approachable. Yeah, we'll
Peter:hold off there. We don't wanna give people too much to get in touch with you.
Matthias:I'm pretty sure there will not be millions of people reaching out. I'm, I'm in Oslo, so if somebody is in Oslo, I'm always happy to have a chat on on a coffee or something. So yeah. But LinkedIn is probably the best.
Peter:Amazing. Best best. Great. And is there anything else you wanted to plug in here before we
Matthias:zoom out? No, I think but it's a Google meets not Zoom, a German joke at the end. Great. No it was fantastic to talk to you guys. I think we need we need to, to have a lot more of talking in the industry, even though we are quite good at, you know, talking. But it's talking about all the things we are working on is, is quite important. Mm-hmm. So really appreciate your work of connecting people and in, you know, ideas and interest, et cetera.
Peter:Thank you. We will keep plugging away at this until everyone knows everything about seaweed.