Protenga raised $1.6 million in seed investment, opening the door to food system innovations to provide insect protein as feed for the agriculture, aquaculture and pet food markets.
The investors include UK agritech company Roslin Technologies and the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, SEEDS Capital.
“Protenga’s proprietary solutions in black soldier fly production and waste bioconversion enables the company to have a differentiated and scalable business model in the insect protein space, and addresses the growing gap in the demand and supply of animal feed,” Geoffrey Yeo, General Manager of SEEDS Capital said in a statement.
Benefits of insect protein
In the wild, poultry will naturally eat insects, considered to be a protein-rich food source.
“In both live and processed form, the use of insects has interesting nutritional and animal welfare benefits for the industry; while commercially it opens attractive product differentiation and branding opportunities for producers with direct product distribution,” explained Leo Wein, CEO of Protenga.
“Insects can be produced on significantly less land, water, emissions and without chemicals and pesticides; there are virtually no environmental externalities when you use insect ingredients as opposed to the environmental externalities of large-scale soy and corn production or fishmeal.”
How will the funding be used?
The Malaysian startup plans to use the funding to ramp up production of insect-based products, conduct cutting-edge genetic research and introduce the Smart Insect Farm model, which recycles food and agricultural waste into insect protein, around Asia.
“The investment is supporting the development of our commercial pilot production facility to go live in September, which will further demonstrate the efficacy of our production model. The investment also enables us to double down on our software, IoT and automation developments. Together with the investment, we've also launched an R&D collaboration with Roslin Technologies focuses on the development of the insect genetics and a selection program for high-performance strains,” Wein said.
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