High-Tech Gründerfonds and Bayern Kapital are leading the seed round at Farminsect. 5x Ventures, Genea Invest, the Initiative for Industrial Innovators, and several business angels are also participating in the Baystartup With the fresh capital, the company intends to Startup build a new site for insect production and put additional fattening facilities into operation at farmers’ premises.
Farminsect has developed an automated fattening facility operated by farmers on their own farms. They fatten the young insect larvae continuously provided by the startup. The locally produced insect larvae are intended to completely replace soy and fishmeal as animal feed. This is intended to increase farmers' resource efficiency and added value. Furthermore, CO2 emissions are to be reduced. The startup was founded by Thomas Kuehn, Wolfgang Westermeier, and Andre Klöckner, all graduates of the Technical University of Munich.
“We see ourselves as partners of farmers in order to produce regional and highly sustainable protein feed for pigs, chickens and fish,”
says Thomas Kuehn, founder and CEO of Farminsect.
“Farminsect can already operate economically today”
Farminsect has been developing the process since 2019 at the TUM Venture Lab and at a pilot site at a fish farm. The first series-production systems will be delivered to farmers this year, with additional interested parties expected to be served in 2022. To ensure the supply of young fish to the systems, part of the investment will be used in a new production site in the Munich area.
“We see the combination of regional residual products and insects as a promising business model with enormous scaling potential,”
says Maximilian Bock, Investment Manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds.
“Farminsect can therefore already operate economically compared to its competitors and make a significant contribution to combating resource scarcity and climate change.”
George Ried, Managing Director of Bayern Kapital, says:
"Insect feed has the potential to become a crucial building block for sustainable, future-proof agriculture. Farminsect has developed an important, innovative key technology for this purpose that is very attractive to farms throughout Germany and beyond. This makes Farminsect an extremely exciting investment in the agritech sector for us."
