Smart Farm AS

07/08/2026

Thirty years in aquaculture, and we are still learning something new all the time.
We exhibit at the biggest expos, drop in on plenty of others, and meet the industry face to face whenever we can. We also make time for events that teach us about the trade and about growing a business in general, and we love sharing what we pick up along the way. We are always on the move, so if you want to catch us, come find us at AquaNext in Stavanger on 22 and 23 September Booth E-7250!

04/08/2026

Summer on a plate ☀️

Mussels, a hot pan, a little wine, good bread. Simple food that tastes like the season.

Here's the part worth knowing: low-trophic species like mussels are some of the most sustainable protein on the planet. They feed on what's already in the sea and filter the water as they grow. Eating lower on the food chain has rarely tasted this good.

👉 Full recipe here: https://rickstein.com/blog/recipe-moules-mariniere-from-rick-steins-cornwall/

What's your favourite way to cook mussels, the classic method with white wine, or a twist from your family recipe? Drop it in the comments.

03/08/2026

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube 👇

What does it actually take to scale low-trophic aquaculture? We're making it possible.

Smart Farm was built to help operations grow efficiently and reliably. Behind Purply, Pronofa ASA's product made from tunicates, sits a farming operation that needs to expand without losing consistency or control, and that's exactly where our system comes in.

In this video, Magnus Petersen, Research & Development Director at Pronofa ASA, explains why he calls Smart Farm the missing link to scaling tunicate farming at a commercial level and what that looks like in practice.

Smart Farm was built to scale low-trophic aquaculture operations, a...

28/07/2026

We usually talk about mussels, seaweed, and tunicates as food. But their value reaches much further.

Take Ciona intestinalis, an unremarkable-looking marine filter feeder. It happens to be one of the only animals on Earth that produces cellulose, and the tunicate cellulose it makes is exceptionally pure and strong. Researchers are turning it into medical-grade nanocellulose for tissue-engineering scaffolds, wound dressings, and 3D-bioprinted tissue.

It goes further. Ciona is one of our closest invertebrate relatives, with a simple heart and a compact genome, which makes it a key model for understanding how the human heart forms. Its wider family even gave the medicine trabectedin, the first marine-derived cancer drug approved in Europe. The same species farmed low on the food chain is helping build tissue and decode the heart.

Low-trophic doesn't mean low-value.

Sources / further reading:

Tunicate nanocellulose for tissue engineering — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2025.124671
Ciona as a model for heart development — https://doi.org/10.3390/jcdd3030025
Trabectedin, the first marine-derived cancer drug approved in Europe — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6627313/
The same species as food (Purply) — https://triplepundit.com/2025/red-meat-replacement-tunicates-purply/

21/07/2026

The appearance of a mussel farm affects how a stretch of coastline is experienced. This is not a minor consideration. Visual impact is formally assessed during the planning process, and proposed sites have faced opposition where communities felt the view would be altered.
This informs how we design. Our systems are positioned against the water. The surface pipes in this project were produced in navy grey, a color selected to blend with the sea and keep visual impact to a minimum.
The same design also allows deployment further offshore, where there is greater capacity and less competition for sensitive coastal space.

15/07/2026

A SmartUnit is assembled once, towed to the site once, and can remain in the water for over 15 years.
No dismantling. No hauling it back and forth. If conditions change, it can be moved to shelter or lowered to the seabed, then put straight back to work. One launch, decades of harvests.
That means less transport, less fuel, and less disruption to the site around it. Built to handle real sea for a very long time.

10/07/2026

What you are watching is a harvest of 30 tonnes per hour. One person, sitting down, doing all of it.
Now picture the same job on a traditional longline system. A full crew on deck. Heavy lines hauled by hand, hour after hour. Aching backs, long shifts, and every lift a chance for someone to get hurt. That is what harvesting used to mean.
On this boat, one operator runs the whole thing from a seat. The system does the heavy work, gently and at volume, and the crew goes home in one piece.
And 30 tonnes an hour is not just easier. It is the kind of output that makes low-trophic farming work at real scale. If mussels and other low-trophic species are going to supply the feed industry, the harvest has to keep up. A single operator moving that volume, safely and continuously, is what scaling actually looks like.
That is what we built Smart Farm to do.

08/07/2026

In 1997, a longline system failed in the water. The weight kept building, starfish moved in on the crop, and the whole setup gave way. For most people, that would have meant the end of the project. For Bjørn and Alise, it was the start of a question they could not put down: how do you grow mussels in a way the sea will actually allow?
The answer became Smart Farm. Instead of fighting the conditions, they designed technology built to work with real sea, real weather, and real weight. The company has run since 2000, and those first lessons are still in every system we build today.
The system was built for mussels, and we have never stopped developing it. Because we perfected that first solution, we have scaled the same ideas to other low-trophic species, from tunicates to seaweed. The principle stays the same: work with the conditions, keep the operation gentle, protect the crew, and build for real sea. What started with one crop in one fjord now supports low-trophic farming in more than 20 countries across five continents.

05/07/2026

Match day calls for a champion snack.

Skip the ordinary game-day snacks and serve up one of Europe's most iconic seafood dishes, Moules Frites.

Just like a winger creates opportunities on the pitch, Smart Farm creates opportunities at sea. Helping mussel farmers grow more efficiently, sustainably, and at scale.

Ready to give it a try? Find the full recipe on BBC Good Food. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/moules-frites

30/06/2026

We kept Smart Farm small on purpose. When you reach out, you reach Bjørn and Alise, the people who founded the company and still run it. That same team has delivered systems in 20 countries across five continents. The experience behind every project sits with the people you're actually talking to. The hands that built our first system in 2000 are still the ones leading today.