Innovafeed, the world's leading insect biotech company, recently announced that it has raised $250 million (€250 million) in Series D funding, part of which will be dedicated to accelerating its international expansion, especially in the United States. In the same release, the company also revealed the name of the person who would lead that expansion, Maye Walraven. WeAreAquaculture has spoken with her about her newly created position as General Manager for North America, and also about the company's expansion plans in the United States. Of course, they include aquaculture, especially land-based aquaculture, although this is not the main reason for the company to set up shop in North America territory.
Although hers is a newly created position, Maye Walraven is not a newcomer, either in the company or in the United States. Innovafeed's new General Manager for North America is a French-American national who previously served as vice president of business development in the insect biotech company. She has been with the French company from the very early stages, indeed. "I've been with Innovafeed for five and a half years and it started six years ago", she tells WeAreAquaculture, "I was heading our commercial team for the past five years but prior to joining Innovafeed, I was actually working in the US as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. So, this was a nice opportunity for me to combine my past experience in the US and my experience from Innovafeed".
Maye tells us that she looks forward to bringing both her knowledge of the U.S. market and culture and her Innovafeed culture to the position. "It's exciting to build the team in the U.S.", she says. Her new role has three main dimensions. The first is to establish the platform for the organization and then to also establish a platform for growth. And there's also the construction of its plant, which starts this year.
"So, it's a very entrepreneurial adventure again. In a way, it feels like going back to the early stages of Innovafeed but I think we've recruited quite a few key people who are Americans and I think will be very important to make sure that we don't get a cultural shock and that we make sure that we adapt to the market locally. We already have a team of engineers that are working on the pilot plant and the plant, and we have hired a head of sales. So, it's looking good. It's exciting to start the project over there", she states.
Maye Walraven, Innovafeed's General Manager for North America, spoke with WeAreAquaculture about her new position and the company's expansion plans in the U.S. Photo: Innovafeed.
To explain why it has chosen the U.S. for its expansion, Maye says it may be useful to first understand its production model. The company feeds its insects with by-products from the agricultural industry, so they look for places in the world that have a large availability of these by-products that are not food waste, but by-products from processes like turning wheat into starch or turning corn into glucose syrup. These remaining particles, which are fed to the insects, have a very stable composition and, unlike if they are used as waste, do not depend on seasonality. So, they made the strategic decision to use by-products and three areas in the world have a higher availability of them: Northern Europe, heavy wheat agriculture and a lot of mills there, although right now affected by the war in Ukraine; Southeast Asia with mostly palm oil; and then, North America, mostly focused on corn.
Before choosing the location of their next plant in North America, Innovafeed identified up to 100 corn-based sites. They studied them all, keeping in mind that they also needed a site that could provide some residual energy too because insects like to be in a warm environment. That's how the site in Illinois came out as the best potential for their model. They can use waste steam or heat from the heat exchanger in their partner's process to heat their factories without adding any pressure on the environment because this is heat that's been already produced.
So, they selected North America based on the fact that this was the best place for their production facility and not so much from a market perspective. "We really picked America because it had this unique opportunity to produce this site in partnership with ADM and their corn mill, which is actually the biggest corn mill in the world that they have in Decatur (Illinois). So, it's kind of a way to show that we can replicate our model on another type of feedstock going from wheat to corn, but that we can still have those synergies across the feedstock and energy", Maye Walraven claims. "Often companies go to America because it's such a big market", she continues, "but for us, actually, our core market is really aquaculture, so, it's kind of focused on this salmon industry, which is in northern Europe, and then on the shrimp industry, which is in Southeast Asia and Central America".
"We do believe that land-based aquaculture is going to be a really interesting market for us because they have very strong impact on preserving the environment and it's something that we also are very strongly positioned on, and we also think it enables a lot of traceability on both of the feed but the fish. But at this stage, it's still kind of in its infancy stage", Innovafeed's newly appointed General Manager for North America explains to WeAreAquaculture. "And so, for us, the pet food market is a more mature one in North America, which is why we're focusing our commercial efforts in North America on pet food rather than aquaculture at this stage", she says.
Although they still have about two and a half years to go, construction of the new production facility in Decatur, IL, in partnership with ADM, is underway. In addition to being a partner in the construction of what will be the world's largest insect protein plant, ADM will be its preferred partner to sell on the pet food market. However, this is not the French company's only strategic agreement. Innovafeed also has a global partnership with Cargill to bring new healthy ingredients to aquaculture farmers. The agreement, recently extended from three to ten years, will jointly develop and market insect meal to help aquafeed customers raise more sustainable seafood with less environmental impact.
As Maye Walraven says, aquaculture is their main market. They develop two protein lines, one for shrimp – where they are getting very promising results – and one for salmonids, which is the focus of their contract with Cargill. "For salmon, our key objective was to see if it could substitute fish meal because, as we know, fishmeal is getting harder to supply and the salmon industry is very heavily dependent on it because they're so carnivorous. So, a lot of the trials we've done were to understand, 'can we replace fishmeal, one for one?'. And all the tests we've seen is that you can, you can replace it from 50 to 100% and you can go totally without fish meal. And so, we focused on that", she claims.
Innovafeed is a global biotechnology company and leader in insect production (Hermetia Illucens – black soldier fly) for animal and plant nutrition. Created in 2016 by three co-founders – Aude Guo, Bastien Oggeri, and Clément Ray -, it develops technologies that reproduce nature's processes on an industrial scale. "By building a circular and zero waste agri-food chain replicating the insect's natural role, Innovafeed is reinventing our way of life with higher quality, sustainability and resilience, for everyone", the company claims. Its wide range of products includes insect proteins for aquaculture; insect oil for pigs and poultry; and 100% natural fertilizer from insect excrement. Innovafeed also offers proteins and oils for pet food.