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The French poet Léon-Paul Fargue said that eating an oyster is “like kissing the sea on the lips.” Now you have the opportunity to become part owner of a small but expansive Swedish oyster firm, operating from the remote island of Koster.

Ostrea Sverige AB, that cultivates the European flat oyster Ostrea edulis, aims to attract new investors who share their passion for the shell-bearing mollusks.

“Most of our investors love oysters just as much as I do”, the company’s founder and managing director Karl Johan Smedman told The Swedish Wire.

The Bohuslän-based company was founded almost six year ago by local businessman Karl-Johan Smedman and marine biologist Kent Berntsson. The idea is to conduct large-scale cultivation and sales of the flat oyster. The company’s main market is, naturally, France.

“The consumption of oysters is huge in France. A Frenchman in general eats 30 oysters a year. In Sweden we eat less than a half a year”, Smedman said.

Swedes have also significantly increased their consumption of oysters; in five years the amount of oysters eaten in Sweden has swelled by almost 650 percent, according to the statistics office.

However, investors and customers have to wait almost three years until they will feel the salty taste of Ostrea’s oysters. Its first oyster harvest is estimated for 2013.

It’s not a risk-free investment. The company aims to raise 1 million euro (10 million kronor) in a new issue. With operating costs of 5 – 6 million kronor a year the company may soon need more financial support to keep its business afloat. The company expects to reach positive cash flow in 2015; the same year it forecast to produce 3 million oysters with revenues of 30 million kronor.

In 2007 the company raised 20 million kronor, with state-owned venture capital firm Industrifonden among the main investors.

Still, oysters are more than money. More vital, oysters “lead to discussion, to contemplation, and to sensual delight”, as the American chef and food writer James Beard said. “There is nothing quite like them.”