Establishing a deep tech centre

During 2020, Alginor established its Deep Tech Centre in Kirkegaten 169 in Haugesund. The premises cover 700 square metres over three floors. It is operated and owned by Alginor’s wholly owned subsidiary, Oewa AS.

The centre houses Alginor’s operational management and facilitates for close integration between the company’s researchers, engineers and project managers across 20 workstations. Its main functions are related to laboratory research and development, including product portfolio characterisation, verification, development of new applications, quality control and product specifications, and engineering, including procurement studies and construction designs for the company’s planned harvesting vessels and facilities, e.g., Hypomar Ocean (harvesting vessel), start material processing and production (receptor and biorefinery) and the API unit at Avaldsnes for production of life science ingredients according to cGMP.

The company’s advanced laboratory is equipped with HPLC, SEC-MALS, FTIR, Raman and access to NMR, enabling the company to perform high precision measurements of, among other things, molecular weight, structure, and composition, viscosity, gel strength and determination of functional groups, for complete characterisation of the company’s product portfolio. Today, the laboratory enhances Alginor’s capability to perform challenging in-house projects, e.g., the Fucomed, Polyphenol and Eurostars projects, and external projects in collaboration with technological partners, e.g., the Alehoop project.

The laboratory will be instrumental in meeting product specifications and play a crucial role in the further development and commercialisation of Alginor’s product portfolio, development of new applications, and production quality control.