USA – Darling Ingredients has announced that it has acquired the 50% joint venture interest of EnviroFlight, owned by Intrexon Corporation, thereby increasing its shareholding in EnviroFlight to 100%.
EnviroFlight is a leading developer of proprietary technologies which enable the rearing of non-pathogenic black soldier fly (BSF) larvae in a scalable manner.
Darling believes that its innovative and responsible approach has considerable potential within the sizable global animal feed industry as it will provide an “environmentally-friendly, toxin-free, sustainable source of high-value nutrients.”
Randall Stuewe, Chairman and CEO of Darling Ingredients commented: “Expanding our ownership of EnviroFlight empowers us to accelerate our ability to create higher value, sustainable specialty proteins for the agriculture and companion animal feed industries.
“Our purpose is to repurpose, and growing insects for specialty feed ingredients yields 10 times the usable protein per acre compared to producing algae and is at least 50 times the protein per acre compared to soy,” Stuewe added.
“We welcome the 62 EnviroFlight team members to the Darling Ingredients family.”
Since late 2014, EnviroFlight has collaborated with Darling Ingredients to refine its scalable production processes for BSF larvae. Enviroflight opened the first commercial BSF facility in Maysville, Kentucky in late 2018.
The company revealed that phase 1 of this production facility currently has the capacity to produce 900 tons of dried BSF larvae on an annual basis.
“EnviroFlight has focused on driving necessary change in the global food supply chain to meet the demands of a growing population,” said Dr. Liz Koutsos, President of EnviroFlight.
“We look forward to working more closely with Darling Ingredients to realize the considerable promise of insect bioconversion to offer solutions that meet this goal.”
Darling acquired a 50% ownership interest in EnviroFlight in 2016.
Substantial potential in the animal feed and pet food industries
While virtually all animals eat insects in some capacity in their native environment, and notably within the fish and poultry markets, Darling claims that BSF larvae may be more representative of their typical diet than soybean meal and other plant-based proteins.
Additionally, Darling projects that the demand for fishmeal and fish oil is expected to outpace the supply for these products for application in the multi-billion dollar aquaculture industry.
The ingredients supplier said that EnviroFlight’s scalable approach of utilizing BSF larvae opens the door to a plentiful source of high-quality nutrients for the animal feed and pet food industries.
