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Insect protein start-up raises $372m to fund world's largest insect farm
French insect farming startup Ynsect has raised a further US$372m as it seeks to build the largest insect farm in the world.
The company has extended its Series C funding to $372m on top of $148m disclosed last year, increasing total financing to $425m – the largest amount ever raised by a non-American 'agtech' business and more [than] the rest of the global insect protein industry has raised collectively.
The new capital will fund completion of an insect farm in Amiens, France in early 2022, which will produce 100,000 tons of insect products annually, as well as create 500 direct and indirect jobs.
The new funding comes from Astanor Ventures, LA-based Upfront Ventures, Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr.'s FootPrint Coalition, existing investor Hong-Kong-based Happiness Capital, Supernova Invest (the leading early stage investor in the French deep tech market) and Luxembourg-based Armat Group.
Ynsect said the current global spike in demand for protein and plants poses a serious risk for the world's already fragile ecosystems, requiring extra water and land and generating greenhouse gas emissions.
To address this problem, Ynsect has created a patented process for cultivating mealworm to produce a variety of highly digestible protein and fertilizer products. It said that these products sustainably replace animal proteins consumed in the supply chain by fish & livestock farms, animal proteins used in pet food and fertilizers used in plant nutrition, while leading to greater yields and health benefits for the animals and plants being fed.
Also at FeedNavigator and SingularityHub.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday October 10 2020, @02:45PM (3 children)
Capital costs almost always greatly exceed revenues, and that's okay because the you only have to build the factory once, while it keeps producing revenue every year for (hopefully) decades to come. Assuming half the revenue can go to paying down capital expenses they'll be in the black in 15 years. But that's assuming revenue doesn't increase dramatically once they actually have a product being delivered, in reality they'd pay it down in a fraction of that time, assuming they can truly offer a cheap and compelling product.
Targeting animal feed and fertilizers is probably a smart place to start - gives them room to develop and refine the farming technology at scale without trying to simultaneously win a massive PR campaign against the "ick factor" of eating insects in the western world. Once they have the farms profitably churning out processed meal-worms for paying customers, then they'll be in a secure place to try to expand their product line into human food as well. If they can deliver nutritious ground meat for the price of animal feed or fertilizer then they'll be well positioned to enter the consumer market at the bottom, amongst people with a solid financial incentive to adopt a cheap and nutritious food, rather than as an upscale niche product like most insect-based food ideas have tried. And that's playing straight to the product's strengths rather than trying to win on novelty and high-mindedness.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 10 2020, @04:25PM (2 children)
Buyers is the key, and agree about feeding bugs to animals who have no other choice - that's a much easier sell than McDonalds.
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(Score: 3, Touché) by Immerman on Sunday October 11 2020, @02:38AM (1 child)
Absolutely. I doubt McDonalds would have any interest in such an expensive, high quality ingredient.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 11 2020, @07:34AM