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EntoGreen, an Ingredient Odyssey (IO) brand focused on the circular economy in the agri-food sector, has reached an investment that will allow it to build the first industrial unit for bioconversion with insects. The Santarém-based company will use insects to obtain protein for animal feed, non-chemical fertilizers, and insect oil from plant waste.
This is EntoGreen's fifth campaign, after raising 700.000€ through Goparity's investment community (EntoGreen I, II, III, and IV). The previous campaigns were focused on:
This campaign aims to anticipate funds that the company will receive from a European project of around 200K euros within the scope of the Corporate R&D project NETA - New Wastewater Treatment Strategies, and another 220K euros from Portugal2020 Productive Innovation Fund.
The development of the NETA project aims to create a new technical solution that allows transforming an environmental threat, wastewater and effluents, into a source of nutrients and water resources. A solution that ranges from irrigation to fertilizer production and even to the creation of new bio-industrial solutions.
Led by Ingredient Odyssey SA (EntoGreen), the NETA project intends to optimize and use the Chemical Precipitation Technique, which was developed by the Polytechnic Institute of Beja (IPBeja), in the treatment of wastewater, using the treated water for agricultural purposes, with the sludge being biodigested by insects, namely larvae of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens).
Processes are being developed in the National Animal Science Station (Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária - INIAV) in Santarém. One of the goals is to make this project an example in water circularity. While the water is used in processes ranging from irrigation to aquaponics, the sludge is treated by insects, transforming it into stable, odorless fertilizers ready to be used on farmland. These new fertilizers are already being tested in demonstration fields.
The Univ. of Aveiro and IPBeja will ecotoxicologically evaluate the treated water, sludge, and fertilizers. The insect larvae used in the sludge treatment are being used in biorefinery processes, such as oil extraction for biofuels, cosmetics, and other chemical uses, and the chitin is being used for transformation into chitosan and subsequent use in the creation of bioplastics. As in the past, EntoGreen intends to take this project from laboratory-based development to industrial application, making this project a business and environmental asset.
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Ingredient Odyssey, SA (IO) was founded on March 4, 2014 by Daniel Murta, who is the CEO and head of R&D at IO. It was during his PhD that he saw in insects the opportunity to contribute to sustainability in food production, developing protein alternatives and new nutritional sources for human and animal food, based on insects.
One of the first partnerships emerged with the National Institute for Agricultural and Veterinary Research (INIAV) in 2013, a core partner of the EntoGreen project.
The first project submitted jointly with the institute focused on alternative protein sources for animal feed (Genetics and nutrition and alternative feed resources for terrestrial livestock production, SFS-01a-2014) and was submitted in early 2014 under a Horizon 2020 application led by the University of Milan and involving several entities from different countries, inside and outside the European Community.
Currently, IO and INIAV continue with the development of the project having simultaneously investigated the creation of solutions for plant by-products, bringing the circular economy to the agri-food sector.
In September 2015, Rui Nunes joined the corporate structure of Ingredient Odyssey, as he also worked with insects.
To this day EntoGreen continues to develop work in the area and has started the construction of a bioindustrial unit in which it will be possible to convert 36,000 tonnes of plant by-products into thousands of tonnes of final products.
However, the role of R&D in the history of IO does not end with the implementation of the first bioindustrial unit the company intends to continue researching and developing new projects with innovative biotechnologies, hoping to leave its mark on environmental sustainability in Portugal and the world.
The company has already concluded and inaugurated EntoGreen's new R&D Unit, which is fully operational and will be a fundamental tool for further improving processes and adding value to the final products. The Santarém Industrial Unit is expected to start production in the last quarter of this year (2022).
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