In France, insect breeding farms ready to spend the second

Black soldier fly larvae.

This is what we breed at Innovafeed in Nesle in the Somme.

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• It's crazy what you can do with black soldier fly larvae.

  The Innovafeed company makes flour rich in protein, oil rich in lipids.

  All of this quickly and by promoting agricultural co-products.

• Foods with a future?

  The EU already allows the use of insect protein in the diet of certain animals.

  In aquaculture in particular, where they can replace fish meal and thus limit overfishing.

• Innovafeed is starting its breeding farm in Nesle, near Amiens, on Monday, where it plans to produce 15,000 tonnes of insect protein per year.

  On his heels, Ynsect, the other French champion, also has a lot of ambitions.

We say "breeding farm", but we must immediately get rid of the images that naturally come to mind.

In Nesle, in the Somme, Innovafeed has much more the allure of a high-tech factory, with its automated machines, its multitude of pipes or its 3,000 sensors which ensure at all times that the conditions (temperature, humidity ... ) are optimal.

Not to mention its fifty or so employees [around a hundred by the end of 2021]… mostly in jeans.

There are a lot of animals in the middle of it all.

But you have to bend down to see them.

Innovafeed breeds Hermetia illucens, also known more commonly as black soldier flies.

Finally, to be precise, the adults are mostly confined to the nursery, an astonishing room made up of aviaries that go up to the ceiling and in which the flies have for main mission to lay eggs.

It is the latter that are of particular interest to Innovafeed.

And even more what they will become: larvae rich in nutrients.

From Eggs to Protein Flours in Seven Days

Clement Ray, co-founder of Innovafeed, describes a process that lasts seven days.

On leaving the nursery, "the eggs are immersed in basins previously filled with food, then immediately stored in the growth room," he explains.

The growth room?

Another room that is worth seeing.

The basins are arranged there one on top of the other in columns that support the ceilings.

“If we add them up, there is a total of 200,000 m² of breeding ground,” says Clément Ray.

It is here, therefore, that the eggs become larvae and spend most of their life before being released just before becoming flies.

The following ?

"We keep 0.5% so that they become flies and in turn lay eggs in our nursery", continues the co-founder of Innovafeed.

The rest is turned into finished products.

"

In short: the larvae receive a thermal shock which kills them instantly, then are crushed.

At the end of the chain, Innovafeed recovers insect protein in the form of flour.

And in Nesle, where production starts on Monday, the startup plans to do a lot.

“We had a pilot farm with a production capacity of 1,000 tonnes of insect proteins since 2017, in Gouzeaucourt (Hauts-de-France), begins Clément Ray.

Here, we will eventually be around 15,000 tonnes per year, which makes our breeding farm the largest in the world.

"

Insect protein ... which limits overfishing

Gold bar, this insect meal?

The FAO, the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture, in any case makes insect proteins - the production of which is rapid and requires little space, water or food - one avenues for ensuring global food security tomorrow.

In other words, when we need to feed 9 billion human beings and even more animals raised each year for food or to keep us company.

For human food, the psychological barrier is still important, at least in the West.

On the other hand, since July 1, 2017, the European Union has made it possible to integrate insect protein into the diet of certain animals.

This is the case for aquaculture, but also for the nutrition of dogs and cats.

Here they are the Innovafeed customers.

“The first ones especially, slips Clément Ray.

Our insect meal can replace the fish meal that aquaculture farms include in recipes to feed their farms.

“Not great for the environment.

These flours are made from small wild fish (sardines, anchovies, sprats…).

"Between 18 and 20% of fishing is today transformed into flour for animal feed," specifies Frédéric Le Manach, scientific director of the NGO Bloom, committed to the protection of the oceans.

And aquaculture alone consumes 60% of this share.

This is the first asset of insect farming: limiting overfishing.

Insect oil, rich in lipids, and even potting soil

But it's not all about protein.

At the end of the chain, Innovafeed also recovers an oil rich in lipids and lauric acid, known for its anti-microbial properties.

This time, the company intends it for poultry farms, "where this insect oil can replace others used today in recipes - such as palm oil - and whose production is not without environmental impacts ”, explains Mathilde Bussard, in charge of communications at Innovafeed.

With these fly larvae, Innovafeed thus signs a double environmental blow.

It is even threefold since the breeding of these insects makes it possible to rediscover one of the primordial roles of flies in nature.

"That of destroying our bio-waste and extracting its proteins", slips Clément Ray.

In Nesle, the larvae menu is thus made up of a mixture of wheat vinasse and wheat bran recovered 300 meters away, from neighboring Tereos.

“The plant converts one million tonnes of wheat a year into starch, ethanol and sugar,” explains the co-founder of Innovafeed.

The larvae delight in it.

And, at the end of the seven days of breeding, Innovafeed recovers the remains of the meal which, mixed with the droppings of the insects, makes an excellent soil that will be sold to amateur gardeners.

Ynsect and about fifteen other French actors in the wake

If Innovafeed is the first breeding farm to switch from a pilot farm to more industrial production, Ynsect, the other French champion, promises to follow shortly.

On October 6, the company announced a fundraising of 361 million euros, the largest non-American ever recorded to date in the agricultural sector, specifies

.

The money will be used to finalize the construction of a vertical breeding farm, 36 meters high, for which Ynsect has already laid the first stone in Poullainville, very close to Amiens (always Somme).

The inauguration is scheduled for early 2022.

“Innovafeed and Ynsect are the first wave,” specifies Christophe Derrien, secretary general of IPFF (International platform of insects for food and feed), the lobby of insect farms based in Brussels.

Behind them, there are about fifteen players who have now embarked on the breeding of insects for animal nutrition in France.

It is the most dynamic country in Europe with the Netherlands.

In theory, there is room for everyone.

The market for insect protein for aquaculture alone is estimated "at several million tonnes in the years to come", by Christophe Derrien.

“We're moving forward,” Clément Ray insists.

There are already some very concrete achievements.

Auchan, for example, markets trout for which Innovafeed flour provided 50% of protein intake.

The other 50% come from fishery co-products.

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