Visitors to the Startup Village conference, held last week in Skolkovo, had a unique opportunity to look into the near future when humanity, forced to reconsider its diet, will begin to obtain a significant share of its proteins from insects
At one of the stands at the startup exhibition there were producers of feed protein from fly larvae, representing the Lipetsk company New Biotechnologies. For now, the food is intended for animals, but in the future, insect dishes, as follows from numerous forecasts, will cease to be exotic in the human menu. Five daredevils dared to try the product with exceptional nutritional properties at Startup Village. The site's correspondent did not dare to follow their example, but asked the tasters in detail what the taste of the food of the future was like, and at the same time learned that, surrounded by the warmth and care of breeders, flies from Lipetsk become much more fertile than their relatives.
Alexey Istomin with the products of New Biotechnologies at Startup Village. Photo: website
New Biotechnologies specialize in the production of high-protein food from dried and crushed green blowfly larvae, similar to the mechanism that nature has worked on for millions of years. “Animals, fish, birds reproduce, feed, leave behind manure and droppings, die, and nature tirelessly processes all this.. - Flies lay eggs on waste, from which larvae emerge, which secrete enzymes that accelerate the process of decomposition and mineralization of waste. In this case, the larvae themselves become food for animals, fish and birds. And the remaining substrate, under the influence of rain and sun, enters the soil in the form of organic fertilizer and contributes to the rapid growth of phytomass, which is also food for all living things. In other words, nutrients are recycled, without any pesticides or poisons. Only organic."
This natural process and borrowed from the New Biotechnologies company. The resulting biomass, fly larvae, have a high nutrient content. 50-70% of the biomass consists of crude protein, 20-30% is crude fat, 5-7% is crude fiber.
When describing the positive effect of using feed protein (commercial name - “Zooprotein”) in various industries Agriculture Alexey Istomin was very convincing. “In pig farming, the use of protein-lipid concentrate in microdoses as an additive to the diet of piglets, pigs, boars allows us to increase the digestibility of food and the body’s natural resistance to diseases and viruses, increase weight gain, activity and offspring,” Mr. Istomin lists the advantages of food made from fly larvae . - This is due to the content in “Zooprotein” of a large number of enzymes, chitin, melanin, and immunomodulators. In poultry farming, the inclusion of our feed protein in the diet of broiler chickens, turkeys, ducks and other poultry can increase daily weight gain and reduce feed ratio. In laying hens, there is an increase in egg production, an increase in the body’s resistance to diseases and viruses, and a decrease in mortality.” In fur farming, adding “Zooprotein” to the feed of minks, arctic foxes, and foxes leads to an improvement in the quality of fur and a decrease in the percentage of rejects. Animals have a larger body length and chest girth, therefore, more skins can be obtained from them.
From left to right: ready-made food, dried and live larvae. Photo: website
The appearance of food made from flies will also please pet owners. According to Alexey Istomin, “in cats and dogs, estrus and molting are easier, muscle tone and activity increase, the coat becomes denser; animals get sick less.” When protein from fly larvae is added to the feed, poultry also becomes healthier, their color becomes brighter. Aquarium fish fry develop twice as fast, with fry survival rate approaching 100%.
The miraculous technology did not arise out of nowhere - it theoretical basis were founded half a century ago at the All-Union Research Institute of Animal Husbandry, as well as at the Novosibirsk State Agricultural Institute. There, feed additives made from fly larvae were comprehensively studied in laboratory conditions. Now work in this direction continues at the Novosibirsk State Agrarian University, VNIIZH named after. OK. Ernst, Institute of Ecology and Evolution. A.N. Severtsova. According to Alexey Istomin, the effectiveness of using protein feed obtained as a result of processing waste by fly larvae, in comparison with other animal proteins (fish and meat and bone meal), is confirmed by studies conducted at the All-Russian Research Institute of Animal Husbandry and the All-Russian Scientific Research and Technological Institute poultry farming institute. It is noteworthy that over time, the relevance of this technology is only growing, because the world is faced with an acute shortage of animal proteins.
“What bothers us, smells bad and costs a lot of money, can help and work for the benefit of domestic agriculture, bringing additional profit and reducing the burden on the environment”
The New Biotechnologies company estimates it at 25 million tons; in Russia the same figure is 1 million tons. Since 1961, the world's population has more than doubled, and global meat consumption has quadrupled. Global animal protein consumption is projected to increase by 50% by 2030. So far, in agriculture, its main sources are fish (fish meal) and meat and bone meal. “The highest quality fishmeal comes from Morocco, Mauritania and Chile, and its value increases in proportion to logistics costs. The price of fishmeal has increased 8 times over the past 15 years,” Alexey Istomin shares statistics. - Many producers of agricultural products are abandoning high-quality imported fishmeal in favor of cheaper and lower-quality analogues, and are also switching to meat and bone meal or vegetable proteins, in particular soy. The use of plant proteins does not allow achieving the desired result - such protein requires a large amount land resources and cannot fully replace animal protein in composition.”
The New Biotechnologies project aroused the interest of Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Governor of the Rostov Region Vasily Golubev. Photo: website
In addition to economic ones, there are also environmental prerequisites for changing the feeding paradigm. Thus, to produce 1 ton of flour, it is necessary to catch 5 tons of commercial fish. Considering that the need for animal proteins is great, fish catch has reached significant levels (170 million tons in 2015). The ecosystem does not have time to reproduce fish stocks in the seas. When producing one ton of fishmeal, almost 11 tons are released into the atmosphere carbon dioxide. Additional environmental costs in this case are estimated at $3.5 thousand. When producing one ton of flour from fly larvae, 5 times less CO2 is released into the atmosphere. That is, every ton of fly larvae protein produced saves 5 tons of fish in the sea.
“The taste is unusual, unlike anything else. But this protein strengthens the immune system and promotes growth muscle mass»
Thinking about alternative sources of animal protein, researchers turned their attention to insects. There are more than 90 thousand species of flies on the planet, and each of them feeds on certain waste: plant matter, manure/litter, food waste, etc. “What bothers us, smells bad and requires large costs - environmental, financial, energy - can help and work for the benefit of domestic agriculture, bringing additional profit and reducing the burden on the environment,” says Alexey Istomin. At the very least, the pilot production of the New Biotechnologies company in Lipetsk proves the promise of using the technology in industrial conditions.
Minced Lucy
The well-known metallic-green bright flies Lucilia caesar (in the company this species of insect is affectionately called Lucy) are kept in special insectariums at production in Lipetsk. Several tens of millions of flies live there. These are unique insects in many ways. To improve their reproductive abilities, scientists carried out painstaking breeding work for more than two years, crossing insects using a certain technique. If in nature one fly lays a clutch of 60 eggs, then in Lipetsk insects the clutch (and, consequently, the number of larvae and the resulting food) is on average three times larger. New Biotechnologies specialists do not perform any genetic manipulations on flies, we're talking about about “traditional” selection, Mr. Istomin assures. Pointing to a cage covered with a fine mesh with swarming insects on the stand, he continues: “Yesterday there were only 6 flies here; in just one day their number reached several hundred. This was made possible thanks to correct selection development cycle of dolls, also called puparia. We adjusted the cycle in such a way that today there are many more of them. Tomorrow their number will grow even more.” This process was partly hampered by unsuitable weather: optimal temperature to transform a pupa into a fly - about 30 degrees. Even though insects were brought into the room at Startup Village at night, the temperature there was lower.
At the production site in Lipetsk, flies have complete freedom. Photo: "New Biotechnologies".
At production in Lipetsk, flies have complete freedom, where they are protected from unfavorable conditions and stress. Flies are kept in special cages containing water, sugar, milk powder and boxes with minced meat where flies lay eggs. The clutches are removed daily. The quality and purity of the population is controlled by the chief technologist. For this purpose, larvae are selected, which pupate under special conditions and are stored in the form of pupae. refrigeration chamber. If necessary, the pupae are placed in insectarium cells, and after some time flies emerge from them.
As soon as the larvae emerge from the eggs, they are moved to the nursery. The food substrate and egg laying are placed in special trays on a bedding of sawdust. The larvae are very voracious and grow quickly, increasing in size up to 350 times per day. The period of fattening and active growth is 3-4 days. Then the grown larvae are forced out. This is the name given to the process of separating larvae from an organic substrate. Afterwards, the biomass is dried and sent for storage.
Flies grow on meat from a poultry farm, which is located not far from the pilot production of the New Biotechnologies company. Larvae raised on poultry meat have higher nutrient content than those raised on manure and droppings. At the same time, there must be a lot of meat reserves - to produce 1 kg of “Zooprotein”, it is necessary to grow 3.5 kg of live larvae, which requires 10 kg of meat waste.
Since 1961, the world's population has more than doubled, and global meat consumption has quadrupled. Global animal protein consumption is projected to increase by 50% by 2030.
“The average mortality rate at poultry farms is 5% of the total livestock. This type of waste brings a large number of troubles for poultry farms. These are environmental issues (you have to recycle), financial (you have to pay for disposal), and organizational (collect, store, deliver, take into account). Therefore, the use of our method is most effective directly at the poultry farm, which makes poultry production waste-free,” explained Alexey Istomin. - In general, an increase in agricultural production volumes inevitably entails an increase negative influence on the environment. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, in Russia total area land contaminated by agricultural waste exceeds 2.4 million hectares. In 2015, the total amount of such waste exceeded 380 million tons. There is practically no culture of recycling agricultural waste in the country. Such productions count in units.”
Pilot production in Lipetsk. Photo: "New Biotechnologies"
The complexity of industrial implementation of technology is due, first of all, to administrative and environmental factors. “Abroad, in particular in China and Indonesia, the basin (“open”) method is used, explains Istomin. - It is unacceptable in our conditions, since the larvae produce large amounts of ammonia during their life. Our project proposes a “closed” method using nursery cabinets for flies equipped with local exhaust ventilation, microbiological filter for air purification, special systems for preparing raw materials, infrared drying. All this allows us to fully meet the requirements for environmental safety.”
The larvae are very voracious and grow quickly, increasing in size up to 350 times per day. Photo: "New Biotechnologies"
Now the New Biotechnologies company is in the process of obtaining Skolkovo resident status. The team counts on the Foundation's assistance mainly in product certification. In Russia, there is no regulatory framework related to the regulation of the use of waste processing technology with fly larvae, therefore, says Alexey Istomin, “you have to get sophisticated.” At the same time, the regulatory authorities state the safety of the products: the Lipetsk Regional Vet Laboratory conducts studies of live biomass for the presence of salmonella, the genome of the pathogens of psittacosis and influenza in birds, eggs and larvae of helminths. The dried biomass of fly larvae is determined mass fraction crude protein, crude fat mass fraction, moisture and toxicity. The Tula Interregional Veterinary Laboratory conducts research on organic zoohumus fertilizer for the presence of pathogenic flora. The results of each study are documented in a protocol.”
The site’s interlocutor is convinced: in the foreseeable future, not only animals, but also people will become familiar with the taste of protein from insects. This point of view is shared by more and more specialists. Thus, three years ago, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization released a study stating that insects are already present to one degree or another in the diet of 2 billion people. To deal with hunger and pollution environment, humanity should eat more insects, the report's authors urged.
Moreover, as evidenced by personal experience Alexey Istomin, it’s not so scary. For several months now, he has been adding a tablespoon of insect protein to his morning shake made from milk, banana and other traditional ingredients. “The taste is unusual, unlike anything else. But it strengthens the immune system and promotes muscle growth,” says Alexey.
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Jarod Goldin is the co-founder of the Canadian farm Next Millennium Farms. He's been experimenting with growing crickets and larvae for eighteen months and considers himself a veteran of the beetle business. In 2013, he read a UN report that said using insects could be the solution to hunger. He also saw a TV news story about Chapul, a startup producing energy bars from finely ground crickets. Inspired, Goldin persuaded his brothers Darren and Ryan, who were already raising insects to sell to pet stores, to start another business. This time to supply people with healthy and sustainable food rich in protein. “The market was just starting to develop, so I didn’t intend to miss out,” says Goldin.
The fact that raising insects is a profitable business has already been proven by more than one generation. But their goods were used for fish bait or reptile food. And their manufacturers were not too keen on modernizing production. The new generation of businessmen is determined to automate all processes. They are stimulated by strict requirements for raw materials for products that are eaten by people. To begin with, insects for humans should be grown separately from those that are fed to animals or sold to fishermen. Daniel Imrie-Sithunayake co-founded Tiny Farms, a California farm that was intended to be a showcase production facility. modern methods raising insects. The developed technologies are planned to be patented and sold.
The scale of production leads to the need to reduce costs. Farming bugs for pets is profitable as long as it's small: "People don't think twice about buying 10 crickets for $10 once a week for their pet bearded lizard." But if you try to sell them one pound of beetle meal, which produces about 5,000 insects, for $30 to $40, the demand is clearly limited,” says Imrie-Sithunayake. The insect farming industry does not yet have any well-trodden paths, no time-tested solutions, or even a developed network of producers to consult. Automating production is a story of trial and error, laments Aspire Food Group co-founder Gabriel Mott, who raises insects in Texas, Mexico and Ghana.
Food industry buys
Many insect farms have arisen due to the emerging demand for their raw materials from food brands that produce bars, cookies and other delicacies from six-legged raw materials.
Heidi de Bruin, co-founder of Proti-Farm, a Dutch protein company, has been raising small quantities of edible insects since 2008. Now Bruin is installing video cameras and sensor devices on the farm that will monitor insects instead of people. And Big Cricket Farms was forced to invent its own water pumping system to spray newly hatched crickets without drowning them, explains Kevin Bachhaber, co-founder of the farm.
Another concern of farmers is how to create comfortable living conditions for insects. After all, a significant part of consumers edible insects Concerned about environmental issues and animal welfare. Therefore, says Bachhaber, on his farm great attention They pay attention to the process of painlessly killing insects and try to prevent aggression among pets. Farmers are constantly trying to convince consumers that the insects they offer are truly edible and safe for health. The problem is that there is no well-developed regulatory system in the field of insect farming. The US Department of Agriculture is just about to develop regulatory mechanisms in this area.
Despite all the difficulties, insect farmers are optimistic about the future. This year the EU plans to revise its regulations on new types of products. This will make the process for obtaining approvals for the use of insects in food in the EU more transparent. According to Bruin, in the first four months of 2015 alone, her company made as much money selling edible insects as it did in all of 2014. And Next Millenium Farms received $1 million from a private equity fund to expand its business.
The Zooprotein group of companies is implementing an innovative project in the Central Federal District (Lipetsk) to process organic agricultural waste to produce high-protein animal feed.
Waste processing is carried out by fly larvae, which are subsequently dried, crushed and introduced into the animal’s diet. The advantages of this food over traditional ones are the high content of protein, amino acids and the effect it has on the animal’s body. It is a cheaper analogue of fishmeal, the consumption of which in Russia is 100 thousand tons per month. Moreover, the consumption of 1 ton of our product (protein-lipid concentrate) saves 5 tons of fish in the oceans. And its reserves are rapidly declining - the cost of fishmeal, for example, has increased 8 times over the past 15 years! The project has been operating for about 2 years, pilot production has been built, technology has been tested, contacts have been established, there are buyers, administration support. 30 million has already been invested in production rubles by the initiator of the project. It is planned to expand production to 60 tons per month to ensure high demand for products. Further, the enterprise can scale and develop at the expense of profit. 120,000,000 million rubles are required. We are considering the option of a 40% share in the business. We are ready to discuss alternative options. Payback period 4 years (1 year construction of the enterprise, 3 years of operation) Gross revenue per year 85 million rubles.
Profit (EAT) - 45 million rubles per year.
Market Analytics
The monthly consumption of protein feed by agricultural enterprises is more than 100 thousand tons. We offer the market a product that is better (backed by research), cheaper and safer. And at the first stage, we need to sell 12-15 tons per month (this is the volume of 1 enterprise). The market itself is projected to grow by 30% per year. The market in the Russian Federation will grow at an even faster pace. Our company is included in the National Technology Initiative.
Uniqueness of the project
The uniqueness is that we brought the project on the use of insects in animal feed into the real world. And unlike laboratories and other institutes, we have already started selling it. The project itself is unique in that we use waste in order to obtain high-quality feed, thereby satisfying the needs of agricultural industrialists and environmentalists, because Our production does not use fish, the catch of which jeopardizes the safety of the seas. The project is included in the list of Skolkovo residents
This is the story of entrepreneur Igor Istomin, who built a real fly farm. Igor explains why flies are not really disgusting, how larvae help little piglets and chickens survive, and why a small factory for the production of insect larvae should someday appear in every poultry farm.
As a child, I had one strange thing. More precisely, I had a lot of strange things, but now I will tell you only about one. I really liked flies. Parents hung in our country house Velcro from insects, and periodically half-immobilized, unhappy and dying flies fell from them onto the table. I picked them up and put them in a transparent box with holes for air - it was a hospital. When another insect, despite all my efforts, still died, I seemed to be very upset. I also liked to put a fly on my hand and watch it crawl along it - it felt pleasantly ticklish to my hand. You must have grimaced, reader? That's how my parents grimaced. And they said: “Julia, do you have any idea WHERE they walked with those paws?”
“You know, Yulia, people very strongly believe in different stereotypes,” Igor Istomin, founder of the New Technologies company, tells me, a small farm where fly larvae are bred to create environmentally friendly biofeeds and fertilizers. “When you tell people about flies, they immediately imagine all sorts of sewage, toilets and rot. But, firstly, if it were not for these insects, our planet would long ago have been covered with a many-kilometer layer of corpses, because they would have been processed much more slowly. And in general, research has long proven that there is an antimicrobial environment around every fly.
Yes, this insect climbs through garbage dumps, but then it carefully washes its legs, which have thin chitinous hairs. These hairs secrete a microsecretion that disinfects everything. And in Napoleonic times, fly larvae were used to clean hard-to-heal wounds - they perfectly remove necrotic tissue and keep living tissue intact. Microsecret is rich in immunomodulators, and healing occurs faster. In America, this method is still sometimes used in surgery today.
Until 2014, Igor Istomin was engaged in household appliances, but with the onset of crisis, I decided to sell my business and start some new promising business. Friends invited him to build a small plant for the production of maggots together, and Igor invested money from the sale of the business into this enterprise.
“Actually, before, even before I started selling household appliances, I was a swimming coach,” says Igor. - And not bad. So biology was close to me, I was quite good at it. It seemed to me that the production of fish maggots was somehow superficial; hatching larvae could give the world much more than just fish bait. I began to study this topic more and more deeply, my sons helped me, and as a result, by 2015, they and I produced the first experimental batch of excellent feed protein, and in January 2016 we demonstrated it in Moscow at an exhibition at VDNKh.
As Igor Istomin explains, he didn’t have to invent any new technology—nature had already done everything. Flies have lived in the world for more than twenty million years - they have survived glacial period and many other natural disasters, unlike mammoths, dinosaurs and the Mauritian dodo. This means that there is something in the body of this insect that promotes survival.
- IN wildlife animals, birds and fish eat something, throw out digestive waste, and eventually die,” explains Istomin. “As soon as this happens, hordes of flies immediately fly to the place of death and lay eggs. And the eggs hatch into larvae that quickly process this waste. At the same time, the larvae themselves become excellent food for other animals, and the processed waste becomes an excellent fertilizer for plants. Nature has already thought of everything for us. We simply took this mechanism and placed it under the roof - we decided to see what would happen if we made our own company out of it.
At any agricultural enterprise, be it a poultry farm or a fish hatchery, quite a lot of waste is generated. For example, the mortality rate of poultry is five to seven percent - chickens periodically die due to weak immunity or break something. Also, enterprises always have food and vegetable waste, and they all cause a lot of trouble - they need to be stored, disposed of, special acidifiers must be added, so that after two years this waste turns into fertilizer and can be taken out to the fields. If all this is not done, problems with environmental services may arise. As Igor Istomin explains, his “fly farm” can become an ideal example of waste-free production, and then you won’t have to spend money and time on waste disposal at agricultural enterprises.
“We breed a fly called Lucilia Caesar, this is an ordinary green synanthropic carrion fly,” explains Igor. - However, we just call her Lyusya. We have an insectarium with cages where adult flies live and crossbreeding is constantly going on different types and generations. On average, each fly lives from twenty-one to twenty four days, so those insects that now live in our insectarium have never seen outside world and are noticeably different from those you meet in nature. For example, they have a much higher egg production, because here, with us, different generations are constantly interbreeding in a closed environment.
ABOUT TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND FLIES LIVE IN EACH CELL OF THE INSECTARY, THERE ARE FIVE SUCH CELLS ON THE FARM, THAT IS, IN TOTAL, THERE ARE ABOUT A MILLION FLIES IN PRODUCTION.
They eat sugar and powdered milk and drink water. Each cage contains a small box—Igor calls it a “lunchbox”—with minced meat inside. “New Technologies” cooperates with a poultry farm, which specially for this purpose gives away those birds that did not manage to survive.
“There are small holes in the lunchboxes,” says Igor Istomin. - Flies are shy. Therefore, they fly there to reproduce and lay eggs on minced meat. Every day a technologist comes, takes away lunchboxes with clutches and puts new ones. And the old ones - with masonry - are transferred to the nursery shop.
In the breeding shop there are special cabinets with trays where the company’s employees place masonry and add more fresh meat. Then larvae emerge from the eggs and feed on it. During growth, fly larvae emit a lot of ammonia, so each cabinet is connected to ventilation, the air from which, when going outside, passes through a special microbiological filter.
IN FOUR DAYS, EACH LARVA INCREASES THREE HUNDRED FIFTY TO FOUR HUNDRED TIMES, AND ONE GRAM OF LARVA REQUIRES TWO HUNDRED GRAMS OF MEAT.
They do not have a stomach, so it would be wrong to say that they eat this meat. They secrete larval juice into the meat, which is rich in enzymes and nutrients. Under their influence, the meat quickly decomposes and turns into mush, and then the larva passes the resulting substance through itself many times. Due to this, it grows, and the resulting substrate is enriched with enzymes and becomes useful.
After three to five days, when the larvae grow, they, together with the substrate obtained from the meat, are taken to a special workshop. To separate the grown larvae from the substrate, everything is dumped together onto a fine mesh - the larvae crawl through it, and the dry fibrous mass, which was once minced meat, remains on the mesh.
Then the substrate is collected in bags and left for a day. At a temperature of 65 degrees it burns out under the influence of anaerobic bacteria. Then it is dried and crushed.
- It turns out great organic fertilizer, boasts Igor Istomin. “It kills all kinds of bugs in the soil that eat the roots of plants, and the yield doubles. In this case, it is enough to add just a pinch of such substrate to the ground.
While in one department of the enterprise fertilizer is made from processed meat, in another department the larvae are turned into food: they are processed, cleaned and dried at a temperature of no more than 70 degrees in order to preserve nutrients and not destroy the protein. Then they grind it. The result is fatty flour with a high content of protein and lipid acids - BLK, protein-lipid concentrate.
“BLK contains natural polymers melanin and chitin,” says Igor. - They help strengthen the immune system. For example, the most difficult period for piglets is the transition from mother's milk to regular feed. Often the gastrointestinal system of animals that are not yet strong cannot cope, they get sick and die. If seven days before switching to feed you start adding BLK to milk, half a gram for every kilogram of weight, and then add it to the feed for another ten days, the result will be one hundred percent. The piglets will stop getting sick. And if you add a little BLK to the food of your domestic dog or cat, its immunity will improve, it will be easier to shed, and its activity will increase.
Today, in most agricultural production, animals receive protein in the form of fishmeal. But over the past fifteen years, it has risen in price eight times, and the world’s fish reserves are gradually drying up, because it turns out that animals are competing for it with humans. At the same time, the production demand for animal proteins is colossal - in Russia their annual deficit is about a million tons. It turns out that we urgently need to look for alternative sources of this protein. And Igor Istomin believes that he has found such a source.
“Imagine if every poultry farm had a small workshop like the one we made at our own,” he says. “You don’t have to pay for disposal, and here, in your own production, you could make excellent food.” This would give both weight gain and a reduction in morbidity. In Russia, such technology began to be invented back in the 70s of the last century, but all this was at the level scientific research and remained within the laboratories. We are trying to bring this into real life.
True, it turned out that it is not so easy to establish waste-free production in Russia - there is simply no regulatory framework. At first, it took a long time to certify the product - the companies that deal with this simply did not know how to work with dried larvae. Then it turned out that according to the law biological waste must be burned, buried or exposed heat treatment. No other processing methods are provided. So you have to demonstrate over and over again new technology and prove to everyone that it works.
So far, Igor Istomin’s enterprise remains unprofitable: in order for it to start making a profit, it needs to greatly expand its area and hire more workers. In the meantime, there is only enough capacity to produce pilot batches - they are sent as samples to plants and factories so that they can test the new food and compare it with fishmeal.
— Now there are already several enterprises ready to buy BLK from us. Moreover, fishmeal costs from 80 to 120 rubles per kilogram, depending on the quality, and our product costs 100 rubles. That is, it has every chance of displacing flour. But in order for production to not be at a loss for us, we need to produce eight to ten tons of BLK per month, but so far we only get one.
We are looking for investors and really hope to receive a government grant for research. But it’s difficult with investors - you understand, a person is more interested in buying ready-made milk than in a cow that will give this milk. So today we are separated from commerce by approximately 12,000,000 rubles and six months of work. But when everything works out, we want to make something like a showroom - let the factory owners come and see how everything works here, and order us such waste processing modules. We will come and build the same ones at their enterprises - it will be something like a franchise. And the seed fund will continue to be with us. It’s good for us, for enterprises, for nature, and for the state.
Finally, Igor Istomin asks me if I have ever seen pickled beetles in jars - in Asia you can buy these in supermarkets, and people eat them from time to time. I answer that I not only saw it, but also tried it - nothing special.
“You see,” Igor sighs. “There, in the East, people have already understood what we cannot understand. After all, larvae can be used to make excellent protein supplements, useful for people. We have several athletes we know who buy our BLK and mix it with honey for breakfast. But these are athletes. But mostly people are afraid to try this. All stupid stereotypes.
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