Seaweed has always been used as additives in animal feed and amendments to the earth. Farmers used to harvest the seaweed from the seashore and, by adding it to the diets of their livestock or simply spreading it over the fields, they began to realise how beneficial it was
Thus, in Norway the properties of seaweed were already known and exploited by the farmers but  they were of little commercial significance until  Haakon Torgersen began to take an interest in it and founded Algea Produkter AS in 1937.

From then on, the seaweed was cut up by hand and left to dry on the rocks in the area set aside for harvesting. It was only ground up in the factory and around thirty people were engaged in this activity. At the end of 1937 they were able to turn out a staggering six hundred tonnes of product. Production was tripled the next year when it topped the six thousand tonne mark. 

1940 was a difficult year for production because may ideas were examined, some good and others indifferent, for the production of alternative products and 1942 saw the initial, very small-scale, production of alginates.

Given the difficulty of finding sufficient quantities of raw material for the production of alginates, other types of seaweed was tested. This complex research procedure ended up with the choice of Carrageenan as a raw material and with the development of a new production method thanks to the support of the Norwegian Technical University.
The alginate Gelatan, together with seaweed meal, constituted Algea’s main production through the Fifties until the seaweed was involved in the production of extracts at the beginning of the Sixties. 
In this period the sale of seaweed-based meal increased considerably and Algea thus decided to install a further three meal production units in Northern Norway. 

The Sixties were years characterised by the supply of seaweed meal  as a raw material to the alginate industry in Norway and in the United Kingdom; at the same time the sales of seaweed extract was slowly but steadily growing.
Harvesting methods were further improved through the building “in situ” of machines for mechanical harvesting that guaranteed a constant seaweed supply throughout the year. 

In those years, Algea perceived the need to set up a research facility to increase its knowledge regarding the beneficial effects of seaweed extract. 
The Nineties were years in which a vast body of knowledge was built up concerning the innumerable properties of the extract and this favoured the transition of company resources to the development of new products such as animal feed, including for fish farming and cream for the cosmetic industry

In 2000, Algea acquired Maxicrop, an English company specialising in the  production of seaweed extracts and it decentralised the production of extracts to the Kristiansund plant. Frøytang was acquired in that period, too: a Norwegian company at the time leader in seaweed product production for human but also animal consumption.

Two years later, in 2002, Norsk Hydros Agri Division, owner of Algea, in the implementation of a sea-change in company strategy sold the company to the Italian Valagro SpA, world leader in nutritional specialities for plants and biostimulants, already a long standing customer of Algea.
In 2005, Valagro also acquired the Norwegian Nordtang company, only world producer of seaweed-based products situated north of the Arctic circle.

From that point on, Algea’s history has been marked by company restructuring, the development of new products and new investments aimed at maintaining its historical leadership in extracts for agriculture and meal for animals while beginning to examine new and more developed businesses.