Spanish biotechnology firm Tebrio has closed a €30m (US$32.4m) funding round to accelerate its production expansion. This investment follows the announcement from Canada’s Entosystem earlier this month that it had secured CAD $58m to support the construction of a second commercial facility.
Meanwhile, UK insect farming technology specialist, Entocycle, reports on trial work it conducted with US based EnviroFlight, a Darling Ingredients owned company.
Tebrio’s expansion plans with new funding
Salamanca-based Tebrio, a mealworm-based ingredients producer, recently secured €30m in funding from a raft of investors including Banco de Santander, Sodical Instituto Financiero de Castilla y León, GCP, and the CDTI Innvierte Economía Sostenible.
The investment combines venture debt and private equity, which will enable Tebrio to expedite the construction of a new 90,000-square-meter production facility capable of producing over 100,000 tons of products annually.
Adriana Casillas, CEO and co-founder of Tebrio, highlighted the importance of this investment, saying: “This new round of investment in our company validates our industrial model based on proprietary technology. That model allows us to produce at competitive prices in the markets where we operate, thus serving as a platform to expand our operations to different geographic markets.”
Founded in 2014, Tebrio currently operates a 3,500-square-meter facility, producing mealworm-derived protein, fat, biofertilizer, and chitosan. The company also plans to triple its workforce over the next two years as it scales up production to meet growing global demand for sustainable protein sources.
Entosystem expanding
Earlier this month, Canada’s Entosystem announced that Idealist Capital, Sanimax, and Fondaction had collectively invested CAD $58m to support the Black Solider Fly (BSF) producer’s expansion, namely the building of a second commercial production site.
Entosystem’s existing Drummondville plant in Quebec processes 90,000 tons of organic waste annually, yielding 5,000 tons of protein meal and 15,000 tons of organic-certified fertilizer.
The new facility in development will address the rising demand for sustainable proteins and organic fertilizers, reported the producer.
EnviroFlight and Entocycle dosing technology trials
In North Carolina, EnviroFlight recently trialed the Entosight Neo optical dosing solution from Entocycle at its R&D center, as the demand for increased precision in insect farming grows.
Entocycle’s technology, designed to enhance production efficiency for Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae, uses high-speed cameras to accurately count and dose neonates in real time. This precision is expected to optimize feedstock use and improve feed conversion efficiency, critical metrics for the sustainability-focused insect industry.
Liz Koutsos, president of EnviroFlight, noted the advantages of Entosight Neo, stating: “We recently trialed Entocycle’s optical dosing solution, Entosight Neo, and the results demonstrated a substantial improvement in dosing accuracy.”
The trial, conducted across 24 doses in four tests, showed the technology’s high accuracy with a mean absolute percentage error of 4.52%, while maintaining high neonate survival rates, thereby validating the system’s effectiveness in commercial settings.
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Entocycle’s managing director, Matt Simmonds, explained that accuracy at the beginning of production leads to consistent quality and quantity for its partners.
Additionally, Entocycle’s head of new product development, Sul Handuleh, outlined how the real-time analytics component of Entosight Neo optimized EnviroFlight’s production protocols by leveraging machine vision to precisely count each insect entering both breeding and production processes. “This granular tracking helps ensure consistent population densities and enables the fine-tuning of feed-to-larvae ratios, optimizing feed use and improving batch consistency. Additionally, by monitoring these metrics in real time, Entosight Neo can detect upstream issues early on, allowing for immediate interventions that prevent potential disruptions in production and safeguard yield quality. These insights collectively enhance operational efficiency, reduce waste, and support scalable production.”
Entocycle’s marketing director, Jude Bliss, said the optical dosing technology enables operators to optimize feed and larval densities to maximize yields and minimize resources, which has a sustainability benefit. “Needing fewer neonates could also mean a smaller breeding unit requirement, which is the most energy and resource-intensive part of an insect farm.”
As the collaboration progresses, the companies are exploring ways to integrate Entosight Neo’s capabilities more broadly within EnviroFlight’s operations, he said.