Aller Aqua, DTU Aqua, The Danish Technological Institute, Hanneman Engineering and Champost are partnering with the company Enorm to establish Denmark’s first industrial insect production unit. The goal of the project is to produce 30 tons of inspects per day within four years from now.

The project has been granted 15.9 million DKK from the Ministry of Environment and Food Denmark.

One of the outputs from the project will be insect meal, and Aller Aqua’s role will be to help develop and test products suitable for trout farming. Should this succeed, insect meal could also be tested as an ingredient for feed for salmon and tilapia.

“Insect meal has the potential to be a valuable raw material in fish feed not only due to its high protein content,” stated Dr. Hanno Slawski, Group Research & Development Director for Aller Aqua. “Several trials have been carried out with the inclusion of insect meal to replace or partially replace fish meal in fish feed with promising results, but further research is needed before commercial application. Research and trials will be carried out at Aller Aqua Research in Büsum, Germany.”

Besides producing insect meal for inclusion in fish feed, Enorm Biofactory will also produce both insect meal and oil for use in pork and poultry production, and eventually human consumption. In addition, the project focuses on achieving no-waste-production with optimal usage of all nutrients and resources.