Algapelago Marine
The largest licensed seaweed cultivator in England, with the volume to absorb a corporate programme in a single site.
Where a programme goes when it needs tonnage.
Algapelago holds around a hundred hectares of licensed water in Bideford Bay off the North Devon coast - the biggest cultivation licence actively worked in England. Where most of this network is measured in kilometres of line, this site is measured in hectares of it.
That matters for one specific reason. A corporate sponsor placing twenty thousand metres across six croft-scale farms creates six relationships, six reporting cycles and six sets of logistics. Placing the same volume here creates one. Both have their place; large programmes usually want both, and we would generally recommend a mix.
The site already has an offtake route into agricultural biostimulants, which means the land side is commercially established rather than dependent on sponsorship goodwill. Sponsored harvest here goes to North Devon and Torridge holdings on the same free-to-farmer basis as everywhere else in the network.
North Devon is also a useful counterweight to the Scottish and Irish weighting of this network. English consenting has been difficult lately - three Cornish applications failed or were suspended between 2024 and 2025 - which makes an established, working English licence unusually valuable.
Key information
| Intervention | Large-scale suspended longline cultivation with agricultural offtake |
|---|---|
| Location | Bideford Bay, North Devon, England |
| Species | Saccharina latissima |
| Sponsorship unit | One metre of seeded rope for one growing season |
| End use | Biostimulant processing and direct wet application, North Devon and Torridge |
| Licensed area | Approximately 100 hectares |
| Season | Seeded October to November, harvested April to June |
| Standard | The Holdfast Standard v1.0 |
| Status | Harvesting |
Sustainable Development Goals
The Holdfast Standard score: 7.4 / 10
Assessed across 106 data points in August 2026, reviewed by an independent academic partner. The network minimum is 5.5.
Ocean sits lowest in the network because biodiversity monitoring at this scale is genuinely harder and the survey programme is still partial. It clears the 5.5 minimum and we will say so plainly rather than round it up. How scoring works
Positive for people
A larger operation employs more people but distributes ownership less widely than the community farms in this network. Both facts are scored, and they roughly cancel.
The existing biostimulant route means the farm is not sponsorship-dependent. That is a strength for reliability and a mild weakness for additionality, and the People score reflects the trade-off.
Land partners in North Devon and Torridge receive harvest free, with application data returned to the Holdfast Standard assessment each season.
Good for the sea
Species recorded on or around the cultivation lines during the most recent survey season.
- Ballan wrasse
- Bib
- Juvenile bass
- Edible crab
- Blue mussel
- Sea squirts
- Bryozoan turf
- Common prawn
- Harbour porpoise (transiting)
- Gannet (foraging)
On site
Sponsoring at corporate scale?
Pair this farm to a site or a region, and we will build the reporting around your footprint rather than ours.