Insect proteins: Creating a sustainable future by delighting pets and their parents
Based on 12 years of R&D in insect rearing, Agronutris has developed an innovative, high-quality and sustainable solution to respond to the increasing demand for protein. The first factory of this French biotech company is now producing insect meal, oil and fertilizer.
This is the story of a meeting. The meeting between an entrepreneur convinced that insects are a solution to feed the planet and an agribusiness specialist, convinced that we need to rethink our organizations and turn to shared governance.
Cédric Auriol and Mehdi Berrada created Agronutris with the vision that bioconversion is an alternative solution to feed and will help us to preserve the world in a sustainable way. With a world population of soon 10 billion human beings – of which an increasing number are pet parents – the need for protein will continue to increase. We need to do more with less.
Sustainable solution, with multiple benefits
Since 2011, Agronutris has specialized in rearing and processing insects into protein to meet this challenge.“We have raised up to 9 different insect species, and we chose the black soldier fly,” explains Cédric Auriol, co-founder of the French biotech company. “This species offers a number of advantages, including a short life cycle and a high-quality protein that is particularly rich in amino acids.”
It is also an insect that feeds on agro-industrial by-products such as wheat solubles or vegetable waste. In other words, it’s a genuine recycler able to repurpose nutrients that might otherwise be lost! Its carbon impact is much lower than that of other protein sources: 1 ton of insect meal produces 3 times less CO2 than 1 ton of soya concentrate, for example.
First factory in France
On a journey to become a world leader in this new sector, Agronutris raised €100 million ($110.8M) in 2021 to build its first 16,000 sqm factory in Rethel, in the northeast of France. Its first volumes of insect meal and insect oil for the pet food and aquaculture markets – called Ultra’in and Liboost respectively – were produced this summer. In response to demand, a second plant is already being built.
Agronutris has rethought its entire organization and now builds on collaborative decision-making processes and collective intelligence. “Our ambition is to contribute to the emergence of a fairer, more sustainable food industry, by forging long-term relationships with our partners and putting people at the heart of our project,” concludes Mehdi Berrada.
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