Australian vegans 'crowd-harvest' seaweed pasta

A seaweed that resembles green tagliatelle is the focus of a crowd-harvesting campaign to bring the product to Australia.

Amsterdam-based entrepreneur Willem Sodderland discovered the Himanthalia species when he mistook seaweed for green pasta in a salad. He launched the company Seamore and crowdfunded the first harvest.

In six months, ‘I sea pasta’ moved from webshop sales to 500 Dutch supermarket shelves, and the product has since been launched in Berlin, London and Copenhagen.

The ‘pasta’ is sustainably harvested in Ireland, one of six countries in which it grows. This species grows on rocks and is hand-picked, before being rinsed and dried. No other processing takes place. The seaweed looks like green tagliatelle and is organic, gluten-free, low in carbs and calories, and rich in vitamins, minerals, omega-3 and iodine.

Adelaide entrepreneur Sean Heylen is the driving force behind the Australian crowdfunding campaign on Pozible.com. He said the crowd-harvesting campaign aims to generate enough demand to compensate for the high transportation cost and ship enough to make it widely available.