TANGO Seaweed facing bankruptcy – Help us save it!
It feels paradoxical – to say the least: we have just completed yet another successful harvesting season and our storage is full of top-quality kelp, but at the same time we have never been as close to having to shut down the company.
After 6.5 years of operations in Herøy and Sande municipalities in Norway where we have our sea farm and land-based facility, we have not managed to become profitable, and we are now facing an acute financial crisis.
We have always been aware of this being a long journey (someone called it a marathon rather than a sprint) – and no element of this entirely new value chain (including production technology at sea, processing methods and product development) has been established before.
In addition, we have had to build a market for seaweed as food since in the Western world the applications and advantages of kelps as flavouring and healthy ingredients are still largely unknown by the general public.
Over the past few years, we have seen progress in terms of our potential customers – chefs in the HORECA sector, but also food producers – becoming more familiar with our seaweed and appreciating its quality and benefits. We have been getting excellent feedback on our kelp including its taste, health benefits and not least on the sustainable way it is produced.
However, like many others, also we were strongly affected first by COVID 19, and more recently by the economic crisis which led to many of customers having to cut expenses, and buying organic food has lower priority for many of them.
The fact that we cultivate our seaweed in open sea farms means that we need to learn about the basics, such as: what makes a suitable farm location, how to produce viable seed cultures and what cultivation substrate gives best growth success. In addition, all natural variation in the environment such as water temperature, wind and light conditions, but also blooms of other species fouling our seaweed, will affect our yields and seaweed quality from year to year.
From day one, TANGO Seaweed has had a clear knowledge-based approach. We have followed our motto: ‘Ocean farming – naturally’, and we have worked towards building a value chain based on nature’s principles, i.e. follow her example in everything we do:
Nature does not know waste and instead uses all materials in complete resource cycles. In addition, nature is diverse (which makes her resilient) and dynamic.
We have integrated all of these elements into our business model.
Not only in cultivation, but also on the marketing side, we have worked systematically with several segments – including HORECA and ingredient customers and we have tested our own mixed consumer products as a way to raise awareness and open doors.
Aside from our good reputation as a knowledge-based company, we are proud to have created a wide network of partners and supporters who have contributed in many different ways: our employees – few permanent ones, but many temporary workers, especially during the harvesting season. Shareholders – a large and diverse group of both seaweed enthusiasts and visionaries, and gradually more professional investors, who as a group carry much expertise.
However, it is nevertheless difficult to comprehend the full complexity of our operations and all the associated obstacles for TANGO to excel from being an important contributor to the new seaweed sector in Norway and Europe to a successful business. It is taking much longer than expected.
Call for Help
After six years with production, we have come to a crossroads where we must revise our entire production-, sales- and business model. At the same time, our operational team has been gradually reduced and we are under-staffed. In order to consolidate and restructure the company, we need a new solid strategy which is to be developed over an interim period with reduced operations. This new strategy will be the foundation for a new investment case and a stronger team at the beginning of 2024.
The necessary financing for this purpose – a controlled and dedicated re-structuring within a 6-month period – is 1.4 mio NOK (app. 122,000 Euros). With one third of this sum committed by existing shareholders, we still need 850,000 NOK (app. 74,000 Euros) to reach this goal.
After a close dialogue with employees and shareholders, we have concluded that this is the only way forward and the only alternative to bankruptcy.
What you can do
Please help us! We are launching a collective funding effort (through the Norwegian bank service ‘SPLEIS’:
https://spleis.no/tangoseaweedskaloverleve
If we do not raise the entire target sum of 850,000 NOK by June 25, your donation will be returned automatically. We will NOT use funds for payment of existing loans.
Until now, we have created many values on various levels: we have used our licenses and sea farm, as well as land-based facility to produce top-quality seaweed.
We have raised both, interest and knowledge, around seaweed as a much under-estimated ocean resource and we have contributed to increased awareness of what is bound to be a diverse sector and future-oriented way to produce food in the future.
Last but not least, we are proud to have engaged many different people – locally, regionally, nationally and internationally; fishers and ocean people, suppliers, customers, foodies, researchers, people of all ages and backgrounds, people to whom seaweed speaks in endless ways.
I do not think everything we have achieved has been in vain; on the contrary – we have played an important role to date, but I suspect that many will be sad to see TANGO disappear if we cannot continue.
Lise Chapman, on behalf of the entire TANGO team.
See more about TANGO Seaweed here:
For more information, please contact
Lise Chapman, Founder, Managing Director, Board Member: Tel: +47 90 75 05 01, email: annelise@tangoseaweed.no
or:
Bjørn Viken, Chair of the Board of Directors: Tel: +47 92 82 39 19, email; bjorn@tangoseaweed.no
Lovise Otterlei, previous Employee Marketing and Sales, Shareholder, Board Member: Tel: +47 97 70 19 89; email: lovise@tangoseaweed.no