Posted on 09/13/2024 3:29:39 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Evry, France-based Ÿnsect, a start-up focused on producing fish feed, pet food, and organic plant fertilizers from insects, announced on Thursday, 21 February it had raised USD 125 million (EUR 110 million) via a Series C funding round.
The new fundraising comes on top of prior investments of USD 75 million (EUR ) since its founding in 2011 that allowed the company to build its primary insect farm in Amiens, Northern France, which grows mealworms, or molitor beetle larvae.
The new round of funding came from Astanor Ventures, Bpifrance, Talis Capital, Idinvest Partners, Finasucre, and Compagnie du Bois Sauvage and will be used to scale up the company’s output in Amiens to produce 20,000 metric tons of insect protein annually, and to build a new factory in North America, the company said in a press release.
"By offering an insect protein alternative to traditional animal and fish-based feed sources, Ÿnsect can help offset the growing competition for ocean fish stock required to feed two billion more people by 2050, while alleviating fish, water, and soil depletion, as well as agriculture’s staggering 25 percent share of global greenhouse gas emissions,” Ÿnsect CEO and Chairman Antoine Huber said. “Our goal is simply to give insects back their natural place in the food chain.”
Ÿnsect has created ŸnOil and ŸnMeal, insect-based oils and feed for the aquaculture industry, which have been used in growing shrimp and trout. The company said it is also work on feed that could be used in rearing salmon and sea bass.
Ÿnsect recently landed USD 70 million (EUR 61.7 billion) in contracts that run through the next four years, it said, requiring the new funding round to enable it to scale up.
“Ÿnsect is becoming the world’s largest insect producer, whatever the species, thanks to our unique highly scalable and pioneering technology,” Huber said. “Enabled by deep tech, the entire production process – from feeding to controlling the health and welfare of our insects, and from the sensors used for quality control to harvesting mature insects – is automated. We have 25 patents covering our technology, the products themselves and their different applications, giving Ÿnsect the world's largest insect patent portfolio. But ultimately, we need scale to have a significant impact globally, which this investment will allow us to achieve.”
Maïlys Ferrere, head of Large Venture Investment, said her group’s funding of Ÿnsect is intended to help it become “the first player to reach full commercial scale in the insect-based protein industry for animal feed.”
Also encouraging the firm’s investment are predictions the animal feed market will grow in value to USD 600 billion (EUR 528.8 million) by 2027.
Their investors include celebrities like Robert Downey Jr.
How much money will they need to make to make it worthwhile for their investors?
“worthwhile for their investors”
LOL...sure. It will only be worthwhile to the founding team. Everybody else will get washed out.
I see you've played this game before.
Or did I mean:
I see you've been played by this game before...
LOL...it was THAT obvious that I’ve ridden in that rodeo before, huh?
Only to someone whose been bucked off a time or two or ten...
The animal feed market is a multi hundreds if billion dollar a year market. Especially feeds for hard to feed animals like ocean predatory fish. Predatory fish need 50+% by mass protein feeds those are usually fish meal based thus defeating the purpose of farmed fish. You are strip mining the ocean of lower food chain fish for apex predators as fish meal it’s clearly not sustainable.
Insects especially larvae form are 60+% complete protein just like animals protein they contain all 9 amino acids in the complete form and spectrum they can replace on a gram for gram basis animal proteins. This is perfect fish food, she’ll fish food, chicken feed, hog feed, ducks ,geese , you name it complete protein is complete protein. Insects turn food wastes into this great protein and there waste is organic top grade compost. These insects can also eat waste grains the stuff not for for humans due to mold or some other reason.
Anyone who has ever kept chickens will know they are big assassins it’s a huge part of their diet naturally, same for hogs they will attack a dung pile with fly.larvae all over it once they get done with the larvae they will.eat the dung too that’s just what pigs do. Fish yeah put a grub worm on a hook and drop it in water over fish it works so well it’s illegal to.trout fish with live grubs. I get the tinfoil quackery with eatzzzzbugs but this is not the case here this company is making animal feed and its desperately needed in the aquatic feed market.
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