As aquaculture operations around the world continue to grow their output, the availability of protein for use in feed is becoming tight.
As a result, sectors of the industry like shrimp farming are increasingly considering insect meal for use in feed.
U.S. Grains Council Regional Aquaculture Consultant Ronnie Tan, during the 2024 Global Shrimp Forum (GSF), held in early September in Utrecht, Netherlands, said that since 2000, the volume of shrimp feed produced and used has increased 500 percent.
With this rapid rise in demand continuing, the global shrimp industry needs to find new protein ingredients, Tan said.
“Insect meals have shown great potential because of their sustainability credentials,” Tan said.
Linda Chen, an associate at Hatch Blue, a seafood innovation venture capital firm, said following a wave of production announcements that started toward the end of 2023, insect protein production could reach 200,000 metric tons (MT) annually within the next three to four years.
“It's encouraging. It's a move toward reaching economies of scale. It's a move toward increasing the volume in the market and a move also toward bringing the price down,” Chen said.
One especially promising protein source within the space is the black soldier fly – an insect that turns food waste into protein for use in feed. These small insects eat large amounts of organic waste, and their larvae are a natural source of nutrition for animals.
According to Singapore-based Entobel, which produces insect proteins in Vietnam, black soldier flies are characterized by highly efficient feed conversion rates and a short life cycle, with the latter benefit reducing the need for large land, water, and other resources to house them properly.
In November 2023, Entobel commissioned the largest insect production site of its kind in Asia after garnering significant investment from private equity funds. The vertical farming system is now upcycling up to 600 metric tons (MT) of byproducts every day and has the capacity to produce about 10,000 MT of insect meal annually, along with 2,000 MT of insect oil and 50,000 MT of insect frass – a sustainable base for agricultural fertilizers.
The facility has hit 40 percent of its designed capacity and has stabilized the quality of its production, with 95 percent of its insects reaching high standards that the company has set, Entobel CEO Gaëtan Crielaard told the GSF.
Across the world, Dongen, Netherlands-based insect feed producer Protix has multiple operations in the Netherlands, the U.S., and Poland.
While these locations are far from the tropical regions where shrimp farming typically takes place, Protix CCO Piotr Postepski told GSF that aquaculture is in the company’s DNA by highlighting the many milestones Protix has achieved since its founding in 2009.
These include securing approval for its products to be used in aquaculture in 2017 and the establishment of a state-of-the-art production facility in Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands, in 2023.
The company has also recently announced partnerships with Tyson Foods and the European Investment Bank to build new manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Poland, respectively. The U.S. plant should be operational in 2026, boasting a capacity of 50,000 MT of live larvae per year.
The new European plant, which will have similar production capacity, should be operational a year later.
“If there is one sentence to describe what we do at Protix, it’s that we are bringing the food system back to balance,” Postepski said.
Postepski said his company was responsible for launching the first insect-fed shrimp into retail in 2022 and recently celebrated the launch of its first shrimp provided Protix feed available at retail, at Dutch retailer Albert Heijn’s shelves.
“This shrimp fed is with our insect protein. You can find it on the shelf. You can buy it. It's there,” Postepski said.
Albert Heijn Sustainability Manager Frédérique Glazener said the Protix partnership is an important piece in the retailer's broader sustainability effort.
“At this point, we really want to set a new standard. There’s still only a very small amount of insect meal that's used. We want to raise that,” she said. “But, we need other industry partners stepping into it in order to scale and then lower the costs for this ingredient. For now, covering the costs together, we will increase it, but we really need other industry partners to use this novel ingredient – to make it more accessible for consumers.”
To that end, Postepski said insect protein production has reached a ...
