MyAlgae was founded in 2014 by engineers with backgrounds in food technology and biotechnology who were dissatisfied with the contamination risk inherent in open-pond spirulina cultivation. Their solution was to build closed tubular photobioreactor systems — networks of transparent plastic tubing through which spirulina culture flows, exposed to natural daylight, but completely sealed from the external environment.
The tubular system eliminates the primary contamination pathways of open-pond production: bird droppings, insect debris, windborne dust, and rain events cannot enter the culture. The trade-off is cost and complexity — closed systems require more engineering, more maintenance, and more capital than open ponds — and this is reflected in the price per gram. MyAlgae occupies the premium end of the Italian market.
The Po Valley location was chosen for flat land, long summer days, and proximity to the Italian food-ingredient supply chain. The facility operates from spring through autumn, with production paused during the cold winter months when light intensity drops below what tubular systems can efficiently convert.
Quality documentation at MyAlgae is notably detailed. They publish phycocyanin content, protein percentage, heavy metal concentrations, and microbiological results for each production batch — typically showing phycocyanin above 13%, well above the 10% minimum we consider a quality threshold. This level of disclosure is unusual for a producer of their scale.
The consumer product line is sold primarily through Italian health-food retail and their online shop, with growing distribution in Germany and Austria. They also supply B2B ingredients to Italian food manufacturers who use spirulina as a natural blue-green colouring agent. The pigment-grade material for food colouring requires even more precise phycocyanin control than the supplement market, which has sharpened their production discipline.