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Performance at the $10 million black soldier fly innovation and research center in Illinois will help Innovafeed determine direction on a new continen
New U.S. black soldier fly innovation facility is Innovafeed’s first step into North America
UNITED STATES
Thursday, May 02, 2024, 01:00 (GMT + 9)
The following is an excerpt from an article published by The Responsible Seafood Advocate:
If you build it, they will buzz. A new black soldier fly facility – the first in the United States – is now online but any aquaculture business springing from it might take a while.
Innovafeed’s January launch of the Innovation and Research Center for insect-based ingredient production in Decatur, Ill., marked the company’s first step in industrial production in North America.
The $10 million pilot plant is located next to the Archer-Daniels-Midland company, a large corn processing facility whose byproducts Innovafeed will feed to its black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens, BSF) to produce BSF meal and oil. But for Innovafeed, the lure to America was not really about aquafeed sales – at least not yet.
Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) larvae. Photo courtesy of Innovafeed/The Responsible Seafood Advocate
“The availability of these corn byproducts is what brought us to North America, not the aquaculture market, which is much smaller in North America than it is in Europe,” said Maye Walraven, Innovafeed’s general manager for North America. “We turn the insects into two types of ingredients: a protein meal for aqua feed or pet food, and an insect oil, which is rich in lauric acid and has positive digestive benefits for swine and poultry.”
 Innovafeed’s strategy of co-locating its plants next to large agricultural processors is not new. In France, the company uses wheat stillage, a byproduct, and wheat bran from a starch factory to produce 10,000 tons of insect protein annually. Since corn byproducts are more readily available than the wheat byproducts Innovafeed uses in Europe, the company could potentially produce four times more in the United States each year.
If its pilot phase in Decatur is successful, the company will build a large-scale processing plant that would supply insect protein to land and sea-based aquaculture companies in Canada and Alaska, Chile and possibly shrimp farmers in Ecuador. Its main markets in North America are pet food and livestock feed for poultry and swine.
Its black soldier fly colonies will feed on corn gluten and steep water, raw material with low nutrient concentration. By processing the larvae, Innovafeed will create high-quality ingredients for animal and aquaculture feed.
In terms of insect production capacity, the United States is a few years behind Europe, where legislation to permit insect meal in aquaculture was passed in 2017. Photo courtesy of Innovafeed/The Responsible Seafood Advocate
“The innovation center is a research facility where we can test how the insects react to the corn byproducts, and tweak and optimize technology before we invest capital into a larger site,” Walraven said. While the test period duration will depend on the challenges the company experiences during testing, in France its innovation center conducted 18 months of testing before a full-scale site was launched.
A full-scale processing plant would take up to 24 months to build. Walraven said that in terms of insect production capacity, the United States is three to four years behind Europe, where legislation to permit insect meal in aquaculture was passed in 2017.[continues....]
Author: Lauren Kramer | Read the full article by clicking the link here
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