December 31, 2025
Happy New Year's Eve from Ketchikan, Alaska! We have a great year-end recap and some exciting updates to share with you, but first, make sure you're signed up for our emails by clicking here!
Q1 Recap
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In the first quarter of 2025, we laid the foundation for an ambitious year ahead, prioritizing increased production and sales of our liquid kelp plant biostimulant products. We purchased and installed commercial-scale equipment in our facility in Ketchikan and began our first trial production runs. We received a $500k grant from the Southeast Conference to study the efficacy of our biostimulant products with two leading agriculture universities: Cornell and Washington State. By the end of March we were producing our first batches of commercial product and optimizing our production line, all while scaling our kelp supply through a network of local partnerships with fisherman, divers, and kelp farmers in Alaska.
Q2 Recap
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In Q2, we worked tirelessly to ensure our biostimulant product was ready to enter the market. We conducted product quality tests on all sorts of plants and ran numerous assays and lab panels to quantify the unique compounds within our product. Confident with the quality and efficiency of our production process, we began to register the product in several states across the US and with Organic Certifiers. We were happy to earn our Organic Certification along with enthusiastic support from the state agricultural agencies we collaborated with.
Our university partners also began studying our products on commercial vineyards and golf courses, performing product application via foliar spray throughout the course of the second quarter. With our production line in full swing, we were also pleased to have been able to donate large quantities of kelp meal to our local community garden who began using it for composting and soil-enrichment.
Q3 Recap
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In Q3, we scaled production capacity to thousands of gallons per week and kicked off dozens of trials with commercial customers. We continued to product test on a variety of our own plants and saw promising results, especially with root production and stress tolerance. In August we were named a success story by the Alaska Small Business Development Center for our innovative work in kelp processing.
Throughout the course of Q3 we began to attend conferences to market our biostimulant product. We also had the opportunity to visit the research team at Cornell University that is conducting research with our product on commercial turfgrass plots. We later learned that the results from that study were very promising, demonstrating that our product had positive effects on root production and soil health.
Q4 Recap
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In Q4, we continued to build momentum and received even more validation on the efficacy of our biostimulant product. We began to share customer success stories, including one from a large plant nursery who saw double digit boosts to their propagation success rates and major reductions in their waste. We also had a customer grow a prize-ribbon winning pumpkin thanks to our biostimulant!
With the busy summer season over, Q4 has also been the perfect time to expand our farmer outreach efforts. We talked to hundreds of farmers over the last three months and are excited to kick-off even more commercial trials with our new partners in 2026.
We are also pleased to report that in December we received final approval from the US Army Corps of Engineers for the construction and operation of our first kelp farm site. This permit, along with the permit from the State of Alaska that we received at the end of 2024, marks the culmination of a 32 month-long permitting process. There are now no remaining regulatory steps left for us and we plan on beginning construction and operations of our first kelp farm in 2026.
A Rebranding Announcement Going into 2026
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We are excited to announce that we have made the decision to rebrand our KELPEX product to KelpEdge™. We feel that KelpEdge™ better captures the value that our products provide: the extra 'edge' to boost root development, enhance stress tolerance, and power overall growth and yield.
As we move into 2026 we will be updating all of our branding and will do a full overhaul of our website to celebrate this exciting development!
We're very excited about 2026 and can't wait to see what we can accomplish over the next 12 months!
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Click here to make sure you're signed up our regular email updates! 2026 will be an exciting year for Pacific Kelp Co.!
Happy New Year,
Pacific Kelp Co. Team
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