HOW NORI SEAWEED IS MADE
Yamamotoyama started selling nori seaweed 70 years ago, in 1949, and is now one of the premier nori seaweed companies in Japan and the United States.
Access to harvesting fresh seaweed, insures the best quality nori. Our nori is farmed on the seas off of Japan, Korea and China, in vast bays. After cultivation and harvest, it’s dried, graded and roasted for consumption.
Cultivation
In the early germination process, oyster shells are used to attach nori seedling to nets.
The temperature has to be just right for seedlings to germinate properly. Once the germinated nori seaweed attaches to the cultivation net, it is refrigerated until conditions are ideal for installation into the sea bed.
Harvesting
Nori seaweed buds must dry above sea level, during low tide, to prevent algae growth and encourage germinated buds to grow for about a month, until they are ready for harvest.
The cultivation and harvest process occurs multiple times during the cool weather seasons. Nets are installed into sea almost on a monthly basis throughout the harvest season.
Production
From the sea, nori seaweed is taken to a production facility to be cleaned, minced and blended into small pieces to create a mixture.
This mixture is poured into molds where it is fan-dried and sponge-pressed to move through a drying machine.
Fresh off the drying conveyor, sheets are automatically sorted into piles of 10, then 10 folded piles are bundled together, creating 100 sheet bundles.
Roasting
The Yamamotoyama production team inspects these sheet bundles at market to select the top-quality nori seaweed in each category.
In the Yamamotoyama facility, sheets are loaded into a roasting machine and pass through an oven as the final step in production. The roasting process, including temperature and timing, are unique to the brand. This roasting provides a slightly different taste for each nori seaweed brand.
We maintain high standards for our nori seaweed, each sheet must pass a quality control check before being shipping out to its final destination.
