DACOTA completion

Our greatest EU project to date, DACOTA, reached its conclusion on 30 June. Owing to the project, we now have a large-scale facility and a harvesting vessel in the pipeline.

The facility will allow Alginor to land wild-grown kelp of supreme quality from a state-of-the-art harvesting vessel and continue to develop the product portfolio on a larger scale. While other parts of the world see raw material scarcity, Alginor can serve itself to one of the largest, best regulated, and most sustainable biomass stocks in the world.

The DACOTA proposal was submitted on 19 May 2020 and approved by the EU on 22 July for a project grant of €2.5 million. The EIC Accelerator programme allowed SMEs to apply for a sum of grant and equity. Alginor sought the maximum amount in both portions. After months of negotiations, the EU, along with Borregaard AS and Hatteland, acquired stakes in Alginor worth NOK 231 million. Following tranche A, the general public was invited to participate in Alginor ASA’s public placement of NOK 70 million in which new investors saw their subscriptions marked down due to significant oversubscription of the placement, wherein total 385 investors participated. After tranche B, the EIC and Borregaard AS matched the NOK 70 million public placement. All told, thanks to the DACOTA project, Alginor raised NOK 388.5 million of equity.

The project consisted of five work packages and was led by CEO Kjetil Rein. The team is currently revising the final report for submission to the EU.