Bühler insect technology to enable agriculture waste reduction

Published: 26-Mar-2021

Last year, following four years of collaboration, Bühler and Protix, brought their automated industrial black soldier fly processing plant in North Brabant, Netherlands, to full processing capacity

Bühler is targeting a reduction of 50% waste, energy consumption, and water use in the value chains of its customers. To deliver by 2030, the company points out, the industry must have solutions ready to scale before 2025.

A major driver of both land use and CO2 production is humankind’s consumption of proteins, in particular meat. One opportunity to reduce the CO2 footprint of meat is the use of insects for feed, particularly of poultry and aquaculture. Embedding insect production into the farming system introduces the benefits of circularity and business creation, providing a protein source from side streams, reducing the depletion of fish stocks in our oceans, and providing a low CO2 footprint protein source for poultry. Importantly, this may come with significantly reduced land use for the feed production.

The company has announced another step in its insect production and processing capabilities. The company’s larvae storage system allows full decoupling of insect rearing from processing, which gives outstanding flexibility in the operational schedule. The technology succeeded in a field test and is now ready for broad industrial use, the company says.

Last year, following four years of collaboration, Bühler and Protix, brought their automated industrial black soldier fly processing plant in North Brabant, Netherlands, to full processing capacity.

“I am pleased that Bühler is ready and able to address the insect market with proven technologies and I am excited by the pipeline of projects building up. I am looking forward to seeing new projects realized, thus contributing to achieve Bühler’s sustainability targets,” said Andreas Baumann, MD of the Bühler Insect Technology business.

“We believe that insect-based ingredients offer a new category of nutrition for the food system. The realization of such a new category demands a total ecosystem approach with multiple parties collaborating intensely,” said Kees Aarts, CEO and founder of Protix. “At Protix we work with multiple parties to advance the advent of sustainable nutrition enabling a food system in balance with nature. The collaboration with Bühler is a strong example of that. We will further support the growth of the industry and are convinced that further collaborations are needed to achieve important milestones on our journey.”

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