ChitoBlue is an Italian innovative startup that extracts high-purity chitosan from blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), turning it into a resource for sustainable research and development.
A traceable raw material fished in Italy and transformed into a high-grade biopolymer for laboratories, research centers, universities, and companies.
The blue crab in Italy is an invasive species severely impacting Italian marine ecosystems and threatening their historic biodiversity.
We see it as valuable biomass: we recover processing waste, valorize it, and transform it into high-purity chitosan reducing waste and creating new opportunities for coastal communities.
Numbers from the italian sea
- Blue crab catches along Italian coasts surged from 97 to over 1,900 tonnes in Veneto alone (2022–2024), exceeding 2,200 tonnes nationally in 2025. This highly invasive species has cut clam production in the Po Delta by 97%, causing over EUR 100 million in damage in a single semester. Yet 85% of caught blue crab is unfit for consumption, and tonnes of shells are discarded as special waste each year. We transform them into high-purity chitosan — a valuable biopolymer for research, cosmetics, and medicine — working alongside fishing communities and scientific partners to build a short, traceable supply chain from sea to laboratory.
What we do
R&D chitosan applications
