G1-series of factories which process 250 tonnes of organic substrate per day, producing 15 to 16 tonnes of insect protein and nine tonnes of insect oil. My celebration of such ventures is motivated by the strength of


ITG’s insect vision, which helped the group’s success in raising US $105 million of investment funding in June last, specifically to finance plant developments in the EU, South Korea, Israel, California and South Africa. You can talk about potential as much as you like, but nothing quite


compares with investors putting their money on the table and a team of builders arriving on site, ready to start work. Despite displaying immense confidence in its current technology,


ITG is also determined to keep building its knowledge base, by expanding its group R&D facilities in both South Africa and Belgium. This will enable the business to probe deeper into key research areas, including screening a lot of new substrates for their suitability as a base on which to rear the black soldier fly. As for that old anxiety question about whether or not consumers


are ready to accept insect protein as part of their diet, maybe this is changing as well. Consumers in France, after all, are already being presented with


insect-reared salmon products, which are clearly labelled as such on the country’s supermarket shelves, while Sainsbury’s started selling roasted crickets in their UK outlets last year, describing them as ‘crunchy in texture with a rich smoky flavour’. It’s taken a while to get to this point, but the world of insect protein does appear to have reached ‘take-off’.


Omega-3 canola production One of the more interesting items to hit my email inbox in recent weeks contained news of Cargill’s development plans for a specialist Omega-3 fish feed, using raw materials drawn from the growing of a newly created Omega-3 hybrid canola variety, which the company is committed to producing in Montana, USA. The new product is the result of an extensive research partnership


between Cargill and BASF, two companies with close to 200 years of agri-industry experience and knowledge between them. Progress to date has involved screening literally hundreds of different hybrid varieties to find the right one to advance as an Omega-3 hybrid canola. The chosen variety also needed to be able to thrive in Montana’s


unique climate, satisfying the State’s growers with its productive performance almost as much as its Omega-3 properties pleased Cargill and BASF. To ensure growers buy into the new variety in sufficient scale,


Cargill has promised that those who decide to plant the hybrid will be given the company’s full support, expertise and experience. Even more to the point, growers have been assured of full buy-back commitment by Cargill, even though the end-product isn’t due to hit the commercial aquaculture marketplace until sometime next year. In addition to the obvious innovative appeal of this item, I was struck


by the long-term commitment of Cargill to the venture. It helps to put our immediate concerns over stop-go investments and disappearing funding in Brexit-land into some degree of context.


Investments and expansion Another way of coping with Brexit, that is in terms of business planning and development, is to do what UK-based AB Agri Ltd has done, by effectively spreading its EU options sooner rather than later. After announcing in early February this year that it had bought


Michel Pasze, a specialist baby animal nutrition business based in Smigiel, Poland, the UK-based company pointed out that once production facility investments in Smigiel have been completed, ‘some of the feed production currently undertaken in the UK for export to the EU, will transfer to Poland’. It was further stated that AB Agri’s Primary Diets business has been


selling its UK produced, baby starter feed brands and Premier Nutrition premix in Poland for the last 12 years and that, during this time, Poland has developed into Primary Diets’ largest export market. “The acquisition of the Smigiel factory represents a major


investment, helping us to accelerate our Primary Diets business growth in Poland and central Europe,” commented Dr Ian Wellock, General Manager of Primary Diets. “It demonstrates our commitment and belief in the future of livestock farming in Poland and the surrounding European countries, and is a key step in our ambition to creating the most successful baby animal feed business in Europe.”


FEED-X Finally, a few words on FEED-X, the Skretting-backed pilot programme which will focus on the sourcing, testing, financing and scaling-up of alternative feed ingredients such as protein and oil, into the global feed industry. The ambitious target for FEED-X is for 10% of the global feed


industry to adopt alternative feed ingredients into value chains, including aquaculture and terrestrial species, by 2030. To begin the drive towards this goal a FEED-X challenge is on


the point of being launched to find organisations whose feed sector solutions are ready to be tested, scaled and integrated into supply chains across the world. The challenge will seek to identify the nine most promising such


organisations in order to build their global profile, introduce them to a wide range of financing opportunities and, most importantly, provide direct market testing and access. Through Skretting’s involvement, as one of the largest aquaculture


feed suppliers in the world, the challenge will initially be concerned with the future of fish feed. With global aquaculture production projected to increase by 30


million tonnes by 2030, according to the Dutch-based business, fish feed suppliers are going to need to access an additional 45 million tonnes of raw materials. Meeting that demand will require a significant deepening of


current research and development activities, alongside exploring novel ingredients and the forming of fresh innovative partnerships between businesses in the sector. It’s an exciting concept which sits within Project X, a WWF-founded


corporate systems accelerator, which has wider environmental and health objectives.


FEED-X is definitely a key project to follow as 2019 unfolds. PAGE 16 MARCH/APRIL 2019 FEED COMPOUNDER


Comment section is sponsored by Compound Feed Engineering Ltd www.cfegroup.com


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