Here our black soldier flies cavort in the Reproduction module. As you can see, we feel very comfortable among our flies. Only those who are visiting us for the very first time have fear of contact. In this module, they lay the eggs from which larvae later hatch and is therefore of great importance as it determines our amount of larvae and thus of protein meal. The entire output of our plant is therefore determined by this module. Currently we still use some quantities for reproduction, but in the future we plan to use only a small part of 5%. This percentage is sufficient to keep our production quantities at the same high level.
We are state winners of the KfW competition Gründen 2020! Many thanks for this to KfW, which is one of the leading funding banks in the world. Since 1948 it has been committed to improving economic, social and ecological living conditions worldwide. In the KfW competition, more than 500 companies were evaluated according to their degree of innovation, creativity and their assumption of social and ecological responsibility. We are particularly pleased to have been selected under these criteria. So that we can also win the Audience Award, vote for us here.
The heart of our plant: the technology. You can see the development from the beginning of this year until now. As you can see, this room has been filled with everything from cables and pipes to the most important highlight: a coffee machine. Compared to the total size of the plant of 2500m2, this area is manageable, but it forms the center. Our future installations are extremely flexible: we can customize them according to your needs and location, from a low level of automation with higher manpower requirements to a high level of automation with lower manpower requirements.
This week we received an elementary final part of our production. This was positioned in the part of the hall where the processing, the last steps in the production for the production of the protein flour, is located. In order to complete our plant before the end of this year, the individual modules now only have to be connected to each other. This machine, like most of our individual parts, has been manufactured in close cooperation with our suppliers and on the idea of both managing directors, Kai Hempel and Jonas Finck, only for madebymade. Due to the perfect size of a shipping container this part is as always scalable and fits exactly into our concept. In the future several thousand kilos of larvae will be processed here. What do you think this could be?
A pleasant nutty smell led the whole team to our oil press to admire and smell our final product. It is produced during pressing of the dried larvae of our black soldier flies. This last step of production increases the ratio of protein to fat; the protein flour has a residual fat content of less than 8% and a protein content of over 40%. It contains essential amino acids and can be used in many ways in the feed industry.
Insight into our plant: our modules for rearing the BSF larvae are located behind our 1400m² production plant. The containers are delivered when they can no longer be used at sea. We then remove the front wall and party the side walls. In this way we can stack our rearing trays to their full height. We use vertical farming and thus achieve the greatest possible area utilization for produced proteins/m². We could theoretically even go higher – only the ceiling prevents us from doing so. We see a clear advantage here because we can scale to more height than other comparable concepts.
We are happy to be part of this year’s European Week of Regions and Cities. This Thursday, October 15th, our colleague Charlott will give a lecture about us with a special focus on our concept of recycling management. This online exchange with other European projects serves to promote the local bio-economy and to exchange experiences. Charlotte Jacobsen from the Technical University in Denmark, who is doing research on the prevention of waste in aquaculture (https://www.waseabi.eu/). Patricia Sanchez will present the Blue Islands project, which aims to avoid waste accumulation in the sea (https://blueislands.interreg-med.eu/). We are looking forward to further exchange and possibilities!
We pull through: modular is not only the structure of our plant, but also our office space. This is exactly how our managing directors Kai Hempel and Dr. Jonas Finck started as their first office in a container of this design. So the founding team fitted into one single container and today we already have eight. This week they arrived and were placed by crane. Not only our facility is in the middle of scaling up, but also our team: to date we are already more than ten insect enthusiasts*. Of course, more space is needed for a constantly growing team. We are looking forward to the move in the next few days!
All together! Here we have painted the floor on the area of our old pilot plant together. The paint used for this dries so quickly that it requires the combined efforts of both the production and office teams. In the future, our module for processing the larvae will be placed here. It’s difficult to imagine that the whole pilot plant used to fit on this area and now it will be a small part of our big plant. As you can see, the scaling is running at full speed with combined forces. Processing is one of the last steps in our production, where the final products are created. From our larvae we produce protein meal as well as fats. The larvae can also be dried or used alive.
We use the black soldier fly in our insect breeding plant. They are very suitable for industrial breeding because of its special characteristics. All they need is a pleasant environment. This means above all the right temperature and light conditions. Besides, they do not need any food; water is completely sufficient. The larvae of the black soldier fly are also able to utilize organic residues. The fact that they can use a huge amount of different inputs in their food selection makes them the perfect cadidates for the implementation of a circular economy. This is what distinguishes this insect species. We are their biggest fans!