ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF OFFSHORE SEAWEED PRODUCTION IN THE NORTH SEA

Interest in large-scale aquaculture of seaweeds in moderate temperature waters is growing. Seaweeds are a potential source of food, feed, biofuels and basis material for production of biobased chemicals. Although seaweed production is a significant market, in 2004 the world seaweed market was almost € 6 billion over 90% of which was farmed (Douglas-Westwood 2005), seaweed is not farmed at a significant scale in the North Sea.