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Steven's avatar

Lovely post! Some addenda:

Atlantic Sea Farms has ceased operations I believe? No bankruptcy notice yet though so not sure what's going on there, but last I heard all assets were being liquidated...

Oceanfruit hasn't been for sale for a while, AFAIK.

Zeroe Caviar is a sales channel for Jens Moller Products who produce the actual caviar - https://caviart.com/

Greg Pucillo's avatar

Thanks Steven! Not any listed here (yet), but I’m curious to learn who’s growing the best umibudo, those caviar-like “sea-grapes.” It’s a delicacy we can’t get fresh here.

Steven's avatar

It's a small business, and I don't see it moving beyond high-value, low-volume segments. It seems like the Philippines was a big grower early on but the business seems to have imploded, not sure why. Preservation is a big issue, they never figured it out and growing shifted to Vietnam, who did manage to preserve and bag it (for the Japanese market?). Tri-Tin is a good example. Gamai in Malaysia also learned how to do it, the woman is an amazing entrepreneur with several restaurants, four kids and now also doing a brisk sea grapes business on Tiktok (https://www.tiktok.com/@latok_gamai)!

Greg Pucillo's avatar

Thanks again, Steven! This is great. And Happy New Year!

Hugh's avatar

Happy almost birthday, Blob

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Dec 31
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Greg Pucillo's avatar

Thanks for reading! The spectrum of possibilities are broad and super exciting, and you’re right it’s also a story of the whole ecosystem, infrastructure, logistics, and facing some pretty steep petro incumbents for materials on the way to unit economics parity. And not everything needs to scale beyond a community, especially if the benefits (environmental/economic/social) can be well distributed locally.