I decided to introduce an article from Labiotech.eu, dealing with Green Technologies, and more precisely with a French start-up named Ynsect, founded in 2011 by Antoine Hubert, a young engineer. He has been awarded with the title of “Innovator Under 35” by the MIT, for his idea to build an insect bio-refinery, using food byproducts to feed insects, and transforming these insects in manufactured products like fish-feed flour.

As there are not enough resources worldwide to fulfill the aquaculture needs, Antoine Hubert and his associates came up with the idea to develop an insect-based flour, environmentally friendly and which also is a perfect source of proteins for fishes. They created an high-tech farm, producing very large quantities of insects at a very high quality. They also use mild processing technologies to recover all insects compounds, in a zero waste scheme. And insects are very productive : with their technology, Ynsect company assesses that their insects can produce 10 000 times more proteins per hectare per year than other plants and animals. They also use 100 times less water.

Ynsect company is already providing their products to many fish feed or pet food companies from all over the world, and for now, they have an excellent feedback. Indeed, insects are a natural prey for many animals, so the social acceptance is easy. Antoine Hubert explains that his company is different from the others because of their high quality standards and thanks to production systems based on robotics and automation. Plus, they selected another insect species : a beetle, while other start-ups usually select flies. Beetles have a higher protein content, and also contain more chitin, which could lead to higher co-valorization in green chemicals, that are high value markets. Antoine Hubert concludes saying that the potential markets for insects products in feed, food and chemicals are just “unlimited” and represent several billion dollars.