A short talk with Jason Drew, AgriProtein founder
AgriProtein has just received a 17.5 mln dollars financing. What’s this funding for?
This is to roll out support centers to help our clients, build an additional wholly-owned site and to expand and improve the engineering and capacity at our existing site.
You’re planning to expand in Europe. Are you worried about the uncertain legislative framework?
No, we are confident that legislation will be clarified and that we can find a market for our feed outside Europe until that is the case.
It seems big investors are betting on the fact that “the fly could really save the world” (and generate a huge business). Do you think that other companies -working with insects as human food- could soon have the same attention from the investors?
Insects for the human food chain are already a big market in many parts of the world – there is increasing interest in western markets as insect protein is more sustainable and environmentally friendly than many other types of farmed protein.
You may also be interested by my book on The Story of the Fly and How It Could Save The World – a fun look at the fly from its use by Genghis Kahn to Nasa and now AgriProtein.
What’s your strategy to lower the costs and scale-up the production?
We are already at industrial scale production – we have over 18 people in R&D and engineering just looking at how to improve the business – we have made a great start but it will take many more years before the industry matures and becomes hyper efficient. We have licensing our latest large scale factories (250Ton per day of waste intake) to a number of countries we now need to support these nascent businesses as we expand our reach further.
