Portuguese consortium plans to invest 57.4ME to place Portugal in the insect industry
This initiative is part of a strategic solution for “increasing food sustainability and nutritional and industrial alternatives”, as mentioned in the press release.
The InsectERA Agenda estimates to generate 23 million euros and create 140 new jobs in 2025.
The consortium intends to “develop the industrialization, commercialization and export of innovative insect-based products, with solutions for a food area (animal and human), cosmetics and bioplastics industries, as well as for the bioremediation sector, through the creation of solutions for the recovery of organic waste”.
The investment, over a four-year horizon, “provides to allocate 25.6 million euros to R&D [investigação e desenvolvimento] and 29.5 million euros in productive investment, also including relevant amounts for human resources, qualification and internationalization of the associations involved and promotion of results”.
The investment plan provides for the consortium associations’ own financing of 19.3 million euros.
“The InsectERA Agenda expects to generate about 140 new jobs and more than 23 million euros in revenue in 2025, the year in which the investments are concluded”, says the entity, noting that the creation of “three new production plants is planned. insects, the creation of a chitosan production plant and a logistical center”.
The investments also include construction or adaptation works, acquisition of production equipment, including air conditioning, processing and biodigestion systems, quality control laboratory equipment, packaging and installation of solar panels.
“With this investment program, the industrialization of at least 43 new products and services based on insects for the market is expected to be achieved”, he adds.
Insects “are a solution that reinforces environmental sustainability in the agrifood sector, bringing more efficiency to the value chain and greater respect for the use of natural resources”, reference Daniel Murta, spokesperson for Agenda InsectERA and executive president of Ingrediente Odissey SA , quoted in a statement.
“With the involvement of the entire agri-food sector, we will be able to place Portugal at the forefront of this industry, protecting the Portuguese know-how and raising national technology to another level”, he adds, emphasizing that” this is a strategic investment and could become a historic landmark, as it allows Portugal to assert itself in an innovative sector currently dominated by other countries”.
In turn, Nuno Soares, Business Development Director at INOVA + highlights that “continuous support for this mobilizing agenda takes advantage” of the entity’s experience “in structuring R&D and innovation projects of high complexity, scale and structuring effects in the economy ”
Therefore, “the submission of the project within the framework of the PRR [Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência] represents a window of opportunity to bet on new niches and market areas with disruptive potential and approach the pioneer European countries in this area”, he concludes.
By 2030, an estimated production of 260,000 tonnes of insect-based products in Europe, including whole insects, insect ingredients and products incorporated with edible insects.
“In the European animal feed sector, the forecast is for a production of 500,000 tons in 2030, when by the beginning of 2021 only 10,000 tons of insect protein-based feed were produced”, is referred to in the statement, which points to the existence of other options “for exploring the potential of insect production in areas that are still little explored, such as cosmetics and bio-refinery products”.
The InsectERA Agenda was found this year and integrates the national insect manufacturers Ingrediente Odissey, Cricket Farming Company Co, Thunder Foods, the industries Auchan Retail Portugal, Mendes Gonçalves, Mesosystem, Nutrifarms, PetMaxi, Savinor, Silvex, Solfarcos, Sorgal.
It also includes suppliers of raw materials, technologies and services Agromais, APISB & O Technology, INOVA +, Falcão e Cunha, Figueiredo, Torres, Guerreiro & Assoc, Sense Test, the ENSIIs B2E CoLab, Colab4Food, FeedInov, InnovPlantProtect CoLab, CIIMAR , Egasasiz , Universidade Nova de Lisboa, University of Porto, INEGI, INESC TEC, INIAV, INL, Polytechnic Institute of Beja, Instituto Superior Técnico, IST-ID, University of Aveiro, Catholic University of Portugal and the associations Agrotejo, IACA, APBio and DGAV.