Lobster Tough LLC makes bandages using lobster waste
A new Portland startup is finding yet another use for lobsters and showing that the almost $1 billion Maine industry is still finding new ways to keep innovating a 400 year old legacy.
Lobster Tough LLC is currently developing a children’s consumer bandage that has been coated with Chitosan — a substance that’s extracted from crushed lobster shells. This coating promotes not only blood-clotting, it’s resistant to bacterial infections.
The lobster shells, which would otherwise be filling landfills, are instead dehydrated and shipped to a processing plant in Iceland where they are crushed and processed to extract the bandage coating.
If all goes according to plan, one South Portland investor told the Associated Press that a $2 million processing plant will be built somewhere on the Maine coast, to reduce shipping costs to Iceland. Lobster Tough LLC is part of the New England Ocean Cluster a Portland-based business incubator, the bandages would serve as the first consumer product developed by the organization.
Read more
A 'Hatchery' for student entrepreneurs: Foundation grant helps launch COA's venture incubator
UNE to sponsor marine business, research incubator on Portland waterfront
Could a business cluster be the solution to Maine's fragmented food industry?
Opponents outnumber supporters of new lobstering proposal at hearing
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments