Refining An Insect-Enabled Course of For Making Animal Meals From Low Worth Crop Sidestreams

The larvae of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) eat a wide range of foods … [+] Sidestreams and convert them into nutritious protein and oil. The adult phase is the short-lived, non-biting fly pictured here.

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There is a company called Volare, based in Finland, that has developed a more energy-efficient version of an insect-based system to convert various food processing “sidestreams” into feed for pets, birds, fish, chickens and pigs. It represents both technical and regulatory progress with considerable potential for expansion.

Most plants grown for human consumption must go through some sorting and processing steps to get them ready for direct consumption or to be used as an ingredient in something we love to eat. This creates various inedible or inedible “side streams”. The food industry has an economic incentive to find uses for these products rather than just wasting them. In some cases, a different human diet can be produced than in the case of converting “butchered” apples into juice or sauce. Another option is to harness the energy potential of a sidestream by feeding it to an anaerobic digester and producing renewable natural gas. Some side streams can be fed directly to animals, in which case both their energy and nutritional potential are recorded.

Black soldier fly larvae ready for processing

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A very interesting option is to use the “superpower” of an insect called the Black Soldier Fly (or BSF) to unlock both the nutrient and energy potential in sidestreams, even if they wouldn’t otherwise have that much value. Black soldier flies may originally be from the New World, but have effectively hitchhiked around the world with humans and become “cosmopolitan”. They are harmless to humans, but they have the remarkable ability to eat almost anything because they produce at least 17 different digestive enzymes. Their larval stage can thrive on many normally low-value side streams and then be processed into high-quality protein flour and desirable fats. This BSF system is already widely used to produce pet food, but is also an excellent option for feeding fish, pigs and chickens. This column has featured several significant BSF-based technologies throughout 2022 as it rapidly evolves into a large-scale industry. Nevertheless, there is a lot of potential for expansion and even competition for the use of bioenergy from several side streams.

BSF technology is currently more widespread in Europe than in the US, but is also heavily regulated there, particularly when it is used to produce animal feed for human consumption. This restriction is linked to the unfortunate history of mad cow disease or “BSE”, which has fueled the strong influence of the precautionary principle in many EU regulations. The currently approved process for producing animal feed from BSF larvae requires significant addition of water and a great deal of energy to ensure there is a “killing step” that not only eliminates pathogenic bacterial contamination but also destroys prions of the type caused by Mad Cow.

Volare’s leadership team: Jarna Hyvönen, COO, Tuure Parviainen, CEO, and Matti Tähtinen, CTO.

Photo via Volare

There is a company called Volare based in Finland that has developed and patented a process to produce high quality protein and lipid animal feed from BSF larvae, but without any significant addition of water. For this reason, their process requires significantly less energy than the existing process and thus 50% lower operating costs. Volare has gone through the difficult process of convincing EU regulators that they can meet their safety standards with the new method.

After processing the larvae, there are three products (from left to right): a protein powder, an oil … [+] faction and a fertilizer

Images about Volare composed by the author

Volare has a first plant in Finland that can process hundreds of tons of side streams per year and produce BSF-based protein and oil. They are planning another plant and hope to be able to process 50,000 tons per year by the end of 2024. They use a variety of raw materials, including oat hulls, potato waste and distillates from the brewing industry.

They currently mainly produce pet food and birdseed, but their EU approval will allow them to expand into the fishmeal market for aquaculture and chicken and pork farms. There is a lot of interest worldwide in using BSF systems for post-consumer food waste, but that would be even more difficult from a regulatory perspective as it would be meat. Still, Volare sees significant room for expansion, as nearly two-thirds of the sidestreams in the food system could be worth more as BSF products than for biogas production. Additionally, the equipment required for BSF production has a similar capital cost to installing an anaerobic digester but is simpler to operate. Insect-based proteins and oils are on their way to becoming an increasingly important part of animal feed supplies, and hopefully this technology will help accelerate that shift.