What We Do
At CuanTec, we have three over-arching principles, which we constantly work to improve, to enable us to provide the best chitin and chitosan:
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Firstly, we constantly work with our raw material suppliers, whether it is crustacean byproduct or other consumables, to secure the highest level of traceability of our feedstock. We are working to increase traceability as far back the supply chain as possible, to as granular a level as possible. We know customers require the highest levels of traceability and using shell from the UK fish/food industry enables us to ensure that
Secondly, our traceability activities will be complemented with a professional, quality-based management culture across the business to ensure safe, highly-traceable Chitosan and Chitin products. We are delighted to have recently third-party appropriate ISO (9001, 14001 and 45001) accreditation, while we complete our journey to qualify the necessary HACCP activities.
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Finally, recognising that our customers have specific technical specification requirements for their own needs, our production facility is flexible enough to be able to "change recipes" in order to meet these specific requirements. It is important for CuanTec that we can develop and produce to these high standards. Our product strategy is to develop the highest-quality Chitosan products on the market, suitable for specialist customers. In measurable terms, this means we develop products with 90% or more Deacetylation rates and 1,000 cps or more viscosity levels
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While these are our basic business principles, CuanTec continues to be a Bioscience business, therefore we continue to innovate, and with partners, to develop novel useful products and applications for them.
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We are passionate that a new form of the economy, the bioeconomy, together with uncompromising standards of traceability and management culture will see customers, investors, stakeholders and society value the preservation of our environment as much as traditional monetary value.
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Upcycling previous "waste" into valuable and valued products
Huge volumes of shellfish waste are currently produced each year, amounting to totals of up to 150 billion tonnes globally. This not only incurs significant costs for businesses, an estimated £10 trillion spent on waste each year, but also comes at a significant environmental cost. Today, these forms of shellfish waste are incinerated or put in landfill, emitting damaging CO2 into the atmosphere;
CuanTec’s process and business helps avoid the emissions associated with the disposal of the shellfish waste by using and valorising the shell byproducts, meaning these wastes are not incinerated or placed in landfill.
Reduce Environmental Impact
We’ve all seen the heart wrenching images of wildlife tangled in man-made materials that litter their habitats. We've all seen the environmental impact of waste discarded or burnt.
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The world is creaking under the weight of more than 50 years of plastic pollution. The environment is having to absorb the impact of waste streams being disposed o, however well-planned and managed
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Our high quality Chitosan comes from nature, and is biodegradable and ultimately, since it is a biopolymer, returns its natural components to the environment, without leaving a trace. We use natural materials to create our product, and it will return to nature without causing any harm.
Future products with innovative Chitosan uses
Chitosan has many unique properties, which are of use across many sectors- from water purification for use in agriculture and industry to food preservation for packaged goods to therapeutic benefits for the rapidly growing cosmetic, health and beauty and even biomedical categories
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While, on the one hand, Cuantec is up-cycling the shell byproduct and so reducing disposal and its associated environmental costs, on the other hand it is also working on multiple innovation projects with parties to identify applications for successful use across many of these categories. As science innovates itself, companies are finding more and more valuable applications for Chitosan-based products
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One opportunity could be with packaging material, which could reduce food waste, due to reduced spoilage. Chitosan has antimicrobial properties. This means it can cause an shelf life extension of foods wrapped within it. By allowing food, such as fresh salmon to stay fresher for longer, customers will have more time to eat it before it passes the "use by date"​.
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Preventing food waste does not only prevent waste. It also can reduce green house gas emissions and save money for food producers, retailers and consumers alike.
Circular Economy
In nature, there is no waste - everything has a purpose...and if we look closely, everything has some functional benefits which can be used, if understood correctly.
As a society, we are moving away from the linear “take, make, dispose of” mentality and moving towards a circular economy, where the “waste” from one process becomes a valued by-product for another customer, perhaps in a very different industry.
At CuanTec, we take the by-products from the shellfish industry and process them to extract high quality chitin and Chitosan for supply to multiple industries, for which crustacean-based Chitin and Chitosan have specific, unique, functional attributes
