Methane-busting livestock feed company to go public

The organisation's SeaFeed supplement, made from the Australian seaweed asparagopsis, has been proven to reduce methane emissions by up to 80 per cent, while recent studies also found the additive helped livestock grow faster.

After securing a European distribution deal and partnerships to help launch in markets in Japan and Brazil, the public offering will fund Sea Forest's path to profitability after years of extensive research investment, founder and managing director Sam Elsom said.

"We're building the foundations for global expansion," Mr Elsom told AAP.

"It accelerates our ability to commercialise, increases our capacity and enables us to get more SeaFeed to more producers, so more heads of animal feed and ultimately greater impact on emissions reduction, which is our core purpose."

The initial public offering has been oversubscribed, raising $20.5 million and valuing the company at $112.1 million at the $2 per share offer price.

Proceeds from the offer will include funding blending and distribution facilities in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia and South Africa, as well as working through regulatory approvals in foreign markets.

Beef and dairy cattle are livestock agriculture's biggest source of methane, which has more than 80 times the warming capacity of carbon dioxide. 

While Australia's carbon credit unit scheme lacks a method for measuring livestock gas emissions, other jurisdictions are implementing methane credits or sustainability subsidies for farmers.

Voluntary frameworks such as Verra allow producers to generate carbon credits from anywhere in the world.

When it came to global decarbonisation efforts, Sea Forest offered one of the few tools that actually delivered a return on investment, Mr Elsom said.

"They often have an extraordinary cost on the economy," he said. 

"Not to say that they're any less important, just that the work we're doing, in many ways, is low-hanging fruit."