Harvesting system improved

Its late June (2023), and a busy three month period of fabrication and harvesting has finally finished here at KelpCrofters Ltd., and we are able to get the News page updated! 

We spent the spring designing and fabricating the new harvest platform, complete with two workstations, allowing us to harvest two lines simultaneously. Functioning together with our existing semi-submerged transport barge, the system has streamlined harvesting and allows us to collect around 5 tons of kelp in a day, landed with the barge to Broadford for processing. Development of this new harvesting platform was made possible thanks to funding from the Seafood Innovation Fund. The efficiency of this new harvesting system has successfully removed the harvesting bottleneck we had last season, but has to an extent shunted it along to the processing stage. Our collaboration with EcoCascade, the new seaweed processing community company based locally in Kyle of Lochalsh, will continue into next season, developing more efficient processing techniques and facilities. 

KelpCrofters new harvesting platform, which is capable of harvesting two lines of kelp simultaneously (although only one line is being harvested in the image above)