China could expand the value of the crayfish industry by better utilizing byproducts, according to a firm in the country’s heartland.
Officials in Qianjiang, Hubei Province, have declared the city the “world chitin capital” in a media campaign that’s included a slot on primetime national TV. Chitin, the substance formed from ground crayfish shells, is similar to the protein keratin and it has been found to have numerous medicinal and industrial functions. It has also been applied in horticulture as a fertilizer.
The report, on the China Central TV main evening business show, also featured Huashan Aquatic Products, which processes 100,000 tons of discarded shrimp shells annually into 4,000 tons of chitin and 3,500 tons of high value-added products, such as glucosamine hydrochloride and other chitin-derived products. The company claims sales revenue of nearly CNY 3 billion (USD 420.8 million, EUR 383.3 million), a figure which puts it in the league of major Chinese aquaculture corporations. However, the report did not detail whether the total refers to crayfish derived product only.
Only 20 percent of the average crayfish carcass is edible, the “Crayfish Industry Development Report 2019,” published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, reported. It calculated China’s crayfish industry was worth CNY 369 billion (USD 51.8 billion, EUR 47.1 billion) in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 37.5 percent.
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