Insect farm business, Entocycle, has announced a partnership with Siemens to digitalise its operations.
Entocycle uses insects to turn food waste into animal feed. It worked alongside Siemens to create the UK’s first digitalised insect farm showroom under four Victorian railway arches in the heart of London.
The central London location was picked to attract talent and investors to its concept.
The advanced site features robotic arms, climate-controlled chambers and machine vision technology that counts and monitors 3,000 microscopic larvae a second with 96-100% accuracy.
Implementing digitalisation has reduced insect larval growth time and improved survival rates by 30%, demonstrating how the emerging insect bioconversion process can be accelerated and implemented at industrial scale in the future.
Matt Simonds, managing director at Entocycle, said: “We’ve spent a decade developing this concept, which has grown from equipment pieced together from hardware retailers to the bespoke and highly advanced factory we’re running today. The London Bridge centre proves our concept, which leverages the black soldier fly as nature’s recycler, that can be scaled around the world to help tackle the dual issue of food waste and sustainability issues in animal feed supply.
“Insect farming is an exciting emerging industry, and our vision is to be the go-to provider of technology to customers alongside our partner Siemens. In 10 years’ time, we expect Entocycle-designed farms to be processing millions of tonnes of food waste around the world, saving millions of tonnes of carbon emissions with it. Partnering with Siemens to deliver our solution internationally provides us with the trust and scalability we need to deliver on our global ambitions.”