Ynsect, the French champion of insect-based food
Audio 03:45
Insect breeding at Ynsect © Olivier ROGEZ
By: Olivier Rogez Follow
9 mins
In ten years, a French company has become the world leader in the production of insect meal.
Ynsect, that's its name, builds breeding and production farms.
Molitor beetle-based flour is sought after by animal feed manufacturers for its protein qualities.
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With delicate gestures, Henri Jeannin plunges his hands into a container filled with thousands of small black beetles… He makes the insects sing.
“
It's the elytra that collide between each adult.
It's true that from my experience, I put my hands in it.
It's true that I sometimes have a different relationship than some people with insects…
”
A carnal relationship
Henri Jeannin has always raised insects and it is for this reason that ten years ago, Antoine Hubert, one of the founders of Ynsect, came to look for him.
The Molitor beetle, or even mealworm, was according to these two men the ideal candidate for industrially manufacturing insect-based food.
“
Its great advantage is that the adult does not fly, the larva does not climb, so we can easily concentrate them in plastic tubs to rear them industrially.
"
Another advantage of the Molitor beetle: a protein rate of 75% which makes it an unusual food.
Ynsect has therefore built in Dole, in eastern France, with the help of Henri Jeannin, a unique farm in Europe.
A gigantic cube sixteen meters high.
A vertical farm.
The red boxes where the beetle larvae grow - there are 75,000 in total - are stacked on top of each other.
And these are industrial robots that perform the tasks of feeding, hydrating, sorting the larvae.
All of this is computer-controlled.
“
In front of us, we have the actual breeding in the vertical farm, just on the other side of the partition.
We have the temperatures and hygrometries on a screen.
On the other, we can see the pallets moving around.
We have a Sysaxes robot, like at an automobile manufacturer, which will take the stacks of bins and bring them to sorting.
So we have a whole area that is protected for safety.
"
After thirteen weeks of growth, the larvae are bleached with steam and go through a centrifuge which will extract an oil on one side and a flour on the other.
"
There we store all the finished products awaiting quality control, because we took samples that we sent to a laboratory to give us the green light,
" explains us.
Anaïs Maury, Director of Public Affairs and Communication at Ynsect.
And then they go to the customers.
The insect, in fact, is one ingredient among many in a recipe. We are not going to give only insects to our pets. You need a balanced diet, the insect provides protein, minerals and vitamins. But it must be completed. So the ingredients go to producers of croquette or fish feed, for example, who will integrate them into an overall recipe.
"
The Dole plant produces 1,000 tonnes per year.
Flour, oil and "frass", that is to say the compost created by the larvae.
Today, Ynsect is about to open a second vertical farm in the Amiens region.
Its capacity will be a hundred times greater than that of Dole.
All future production is already sold.
Ynsect is a world champion in its category.
Ynsect is the world leader in the production of insects in the world. We are the ones with the most technology. We have three hundred patents, or more than 50% of the patents in the sector. We have the most production sites. We have three of which one is under construction and two are already producing.
The company, which has raised $ 425 million in ten years, now plans to open ten similar sites in Europe and around the world.
As for the Dole factory, the very first, it will be destined in the near future to produce insect meal for human consumption.
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