INTERVIEW Alternative Proteins Magazine April 2024 33 You have strategic partnerships with some of the leading companies such as Cargill and ADM. Could you give us some details about the scope and goals of these partnerships? As suppliers of feed ingredients, we are a new brick in the food value chain and we try to collaborate with all the stakeholders in the chain, up to the end consumer. Upstream, our industrial strategy is to co-locate our production sites with our suppliers of feedstock, as is the case with Tereos in Nesle, France and with ADM in Decatur, Illinois. This co-location model enables us to save transportation and drying costs which are key to our economic and impact balance. We call this production model “industrial symbiosis”. Downstream, our main clients are leaders in the animal nutrition sector such as Cargill and ADM. We position ourselves as suppliers of high-quality and sustainable ingredients that are complementary to existing traditional ingredients. Securing longterm contracts with such tier 1 players was key for us to finance our growth. Our ambition is to create a whole new industry and we aim to deliver large-scale impact. In addition, one key aspect of our commercial strategy is to build consumer-facing projects to generate value for all the stakeholders of the value chain by promoting insect ingredients as premium and sustainable sources of nutrients. In 2018, we successfully launched a partnership with Auchan, a major retailer in France, to commercialize trout fed with insect proteins. You have other facilities in operation and projects in progress since your first pilot production facility in France. Could you give us information about your completed facilities so far and your planned facility investments? We currently have three sites, two in France and one in the United States: • Based in Gouzeaucourt (France), our first pilot site is currently being converted into a centre for innovation and technological development to conduct R&D at various scales which will be inaugurated in the second semester of 2024. • Our industrial-scale production site is based in Nesle (France) and is being progressively extended to reach its maximum capacity of 100,000 T of insect ingredients (of which 15,000 T of proteins). • Our first site in the US is based in Decatur (Illinois) thanks to our strategic partnership with ADM: a pilot facility was inaugurated on April 18th, 2024 in the presence of local officials, our ecosystem, partners, and media. Innovafeed has the ambition to expand its model on multiple sites and regions. Our industrial deployment team is screening potential locations globally.
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