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A fly factory to feed the fish
(FRANCE, 7/17/2023)
Inside the “nursery”, millions of whitish larvae contort in trays to devour a paste with the slightly sweet smell of potato peelings, beet pulp and cereal waste.
Far from a science fiction film, the Agronutris factory in Rethel, in the Ardennes, breeds black soldier flies that transform agricultural waste that no one wants, into proteins: “gold” to feed pets but above all farmed fish, a booming market across the world under the pressure of demand.
“The growth of aquaculture is gigantic and means that we need raw materials to feed these breeding farms”, explains Raphaël Smia, the director of the factory which will release its first insect meal this summer, with a targeted volume of 5,000 tonnes in 2024.
Confident, the company announced on Wednesday the establishment of a second factory in Rethel, the work of which will begin next year, to transform "more than 280,000 tonnes" of organic residues into "30,000 tonnes of flour", without specifying at what date nor the amount of the investment.
Environmental paradox
With recent changes in European regulations, more than 5% of fish consumed in the EU could come from farms using insect-based proteins by 2030, estimates the insect meal lobby in Brussels, the IPIFF.
Meals for farmed fish today are partly made from wild fish. For years, international NGOs have denounced this paradox, which is at the root of overfishing with harmful consequences on ecosystems, the marine food chain and the livelihoods of local populations.
Insect meals therefore represent an alternative, developed in France by three players who have now entered an industrialization phase: Ynsect, Innovafeed and Agronutris, which raised 100 million euros in 2021 and has just signed a contract for “several tens of millions of euros”with BioMar.
This Danish company, the world's leading manufacturer of feed for farmed fish and especially salmon, has decided to invest.
“There is no interest in feeding fish with fish that can be eaten by humans directly” or “with soy”, massively imported and whose intensive culture promotes deforestation, justifies Katherine Bryar, marketing director of BioMar.
Crushed
In Rethel, in a transparent container, swarm what looks like thousands of semolina seeds.
“These are larvae that have just hatched. Today, they weigh 15 micrograms and they will multiply this weight by 10,000 in just two weeks. So 100 grams of neonates will represent a ton of larvae in two weeks”, rejoices Cédric Auriol, the co-founder of Agronutris.
The lightning speed of growth of black soldier fly larvae is one of the reasons that led the company to select this non-invasive species and known as the queen of composting.
This choice as well as the recipe for the dough or the optimal conditions for industrializing production have been the subject of 12 years of research in a laboratory in Toulouse, according to the company.
After two weeks of growth, 98% of the larvae are crushed to give proteins and 2% are preserved to become reproducers.
Inside one of the aviaries where adult flies swarm, Antoine Raybois, his hat covered in insects, explains that “the main activity here is egg laying, the goal being to collect as many eggs as possible” . A female black soldier fly can lay between 600 and 1,000 eggs in her short life (two weeks).
Garbage waste
Another outlet for the breeding of flies is the “frass”, a mixture of droppings and molts, considered an excellent fertilizer for agriculture.
The objective is to produce around 16,000 tons at cruising speed.
(FRANCE, 7/17/2023)
“The growth of aquaculture is gigantic and means that we need raw materials to feed these breeding farms”, explains Raphaël Smia, the director of the factory which will release its first insect meal this summer, with a targeted volume of 5,000 tonnes in 2024.
Insect meals therefore represent an alternative, developed in France by three players who have now entered an industrialization phase: 
“These are larvae that have just hatched. Today, they weigh 15 micrograms and they will multiply this weight by 10,000 in just two weeks. So 100 grams of neonates will represent a ton of larvae in two weeks”, rejoices Cédric Auriol, the co-founder of Agronutris.
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