Uist Asco
Uist Asco are named after Ascophyllum Nodosum, the seaweed which they process and dry using heat from their 999kW Binder woodchip boiler. The dried seaweed is sold as organic fertiliser, animal feed, alginate, and for further refining into chemical products.
Trees are in short supply in the Outer Hebrides, but the MacIain family, who have developed the drying plant, have 720 hectares of coniferous plantation on North Uist. It’s this timber, which has no competing markets on the island, that provides the sustainable source of fuel for the wood. As well as creating jobs in the management and harvesting of the trees, and in the drying plant, the project will create and sustain around 15 jobs in the traditional seaweed harvesting industry.
