September 30 – When a small Maine nutrition bar company found itself at the crossroads of scaling up or closing, its owners took a different path: They donated it to the University of New England.
Portland company SeaMade Seaweed Company produces a snack bar made with cranberries, honey, almonds and of course the main ingredient: seaweed.
After eight years at the helm, co-owners Tara Treichel and Mark Dvorozniak transferred the company to Biddeford University this summer. SeaMade’s next CEOs will be students.
UNE students already grow and harvest kelp at the school’s aquaculture research farm, and they can harvest honey from the university’s two beehives, meaning two of the key ingredients have already been accounted for, at no extra cost.
Business students will help run the financial and marketing aspects of the business, the university said in a news release, and nutrition and other health students will study the nutritional profile of the bars.
“It’s not about just taking over the production of a candy bar, it’s really about pursuing interdisciplinary education focused on developing a sustainable and nutritious food source that truly exemplifies Maine,” said Cameron Wake, Director of UNE’s Center for North Atlantic Studies. ‘We are not in the production of bars, but in the education sector.
“It boggles the mind how many different student research projects we could do,” added Wake, who will lead the program.
They could investigate which environment produces the best flavor of honey for the bees and whether sugar kelp is the best type of seaweed to use. Can the bars be made with blueberries instead of cranberries? What is the most sustainable packaging? How can they streamline production?
Production will have to stop while the school gets the program up and running, Wake said, but UNE-branded bars could be available by spring.
To start, the school will have 10 students work on the project throughout the semester, in classes and through internships, although officials are still working out the details.
STAY TO COLLEGE
Treichel said she started thinking about making something with seaweed — maybe a candy bar or a cracker — in the early 2000s. However, it wasn’t until 2016 that she revisited the idea.
“I went to the grocery store and bought all kinds of grains and seeds and sweeteners and thickeners and started mixing things up” to see what worked, she said in an interview Monday.
She found six flavors she liked, but it wasn’t until Dvorozniak, her business partner, came on board that they settled on the cranberry-almond-kale bar that became SeaMade’s signature product.
The duo grew the company over the next few years with the help of grants from the Maine Technology Institute and space in the Fork Food Lab. They kept it as a small “cottage business,” Treichel said, but eventually got SeaMade Bars on the shelves of more than a dozen stores.
But they said they were limited in how far they could scale the business. The price of seaweed became too expensive for their profit margins, and while nutrition bars provide an easy introduction to seaweed as an ingredient, the industry is competitive.
“There are no intermediate steps to scale up production,” Treichel said. “You can make a bar by hand, like we did, or you can buy a plate line that can make 50,000 bars at a time… That’s just too big of a leap.”
They had to scale up or close down.
The idea to donate the company only came about when Treichel met Carrie Byron, an associate professor studying seaweed aquaculture at UNE. Treichel said the idea was a good fit for her; she didn’t want to completely abandon what had been her passion project for so many years.
While partnerships between businesses and education are common, it is unclear whether SeaMade will be the first company to donate to a university. Treichel and Dvorozniak will remain involved as mentors and advisors to the students.
“I felt like it would have more impact if I did something philanthropic with it,” Treichel said. “It’s a little bittersweet to give up something I created, but knowing it will continue and maybe grow makes it worth it.”
A FOOD OF THE FUTURE
Students will be involved in every step of the process, from growing the seaweed to marketing and distributing the final product, said Charles Tilburg, director of the School of Marine and Environmental Programs.
They will work on the bars “from the ocean to the consumer in a way that I don’t think is possible on any other project,” he said.
Tilburg said the students have already helped the school apply for a commercial aquaculture license from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (currently UNE only has a research license).
“Students are always excited to get out on the water, to harvest the seaweed,” he says. But the permit application showed them the administrative side, “the part that is not nearly as sexy, but just as important,” Tilburg said.
That hands-on experience is critical, he said, as Maine’s seaweed aquaculture industry grows.
The state harvested 1 million pounds of kelp last year, compared to less than 53,000 pounds five years earlier. Biddeford-based Atlantic Sea Farms, the country’s largest kelp farm, reported a harvest of more than 1.3 million pounds in the 2024 growing season.
Treichel is also excited about the growth opportunities for seaweed, which she says is both sustainable and nutritious.
“I think it’s going to be the food of our future,” she said.
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