Vietnam-based Cricket One has received an undisclosed amount of funding, co-led by 500 Startups and Singapore-based Masik Enterprises.

The company said that funding will be used for further R&D and study of the cricket protein structure; specifically, whether its bioactive peptide chain is defined and extracted correctly for biological assemblies to provide highest-quality ingredients not only for food but also cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Cricket One was founded by Nam Dang and Bicky Nguyen in 2017 to promote one of the world’s most environmentally friendly food sources beyond the East and Southeast Asian countries. The company initiates to farm and process crickets as a high-protein, high-mineral food source whilst helping to improve the livelihood of farmers and to productively utilise their agricultural by-products through technology.

Two billion people in the Southeast Asia region are responsible for over 90 per cent of global insect consumption today, that spends mere 2 liters of water and 1.5kg of feed needed to produce 1kg of edible weight, making it an order of magnitude more environmentally friendly source of protein than beef or chicken.

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“In fact, with each hectare able to produce over 250 tons of pure protein per year, it is almost 50 times more productive than growing soybeans for the famous Impossible Burger,” said Masik Enterprises director, Mikhail Zeldovich. “The tailwind for such a product is massive.”

Today, Cricket One is already managing over 25 million crickets per month, with the flagship Cricket One product — a 60-70 per cent protein and 7% fiber cricket powder — being sold to bakeries and chip makers in the EU and USA.

 

In addition to protein, cricket powder is a full nutritional package, delivering high quantities of calcium, potassium, zinc, iron, copper, manganese and prebiotic fiber, low cholesterol, almost no carbohydrates, and 5 times the antioxidants of orange juice.

New products, such as sausage and mayonnaise made of cricket protein and oil, and a full range of protein beverages out of soluble cricket powder are currently in trials in Vietnam, Russia, and Korea; and their frass as organic fertilizer.

Despite rising in popularity, harvesting crickets outside of their natural tropical environment requires massive amounts of heating and other environmental manipulations, as well as high feed and labor costs.

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“In contrast,” said Nam Dang, co-founder of Cricket One, “in Vietnam crickets grow to maturity naturally in 28 days and enjoy high-quality organic farm by-products a feed. By outsourcing crickets growing to specially-trained local farmers, not only do we achieve cost advantage, but we also ensure better local incomes and community development, and better global sustainability.”

Nam exclusively shared with e27 about their method of farming and how the company chooses to work with the cricket farmers.

“Most other companies follow a centralised model meaning producing their old crickets. Instead of doing so, we outsource to smallholder farmers to farm crickets for us. What we do is that we develop the soft part namely farming system & process, feed, egg; we train farmers under our process, and provide them the feed, eggs, and key tools for cricket farming, and secure all their outputs for processing. The farmers have to contribute their labor and some of the by-products as cricket feed,” said Nam.

While this seems a little odd as most farming model picks to go large scale, Nam said Cricket One believes that it’s a sustainable collaboration for reasons like:

  • Considering the available and good resources within farmers. Their labor is one thing, the other things are the by-products they have (e.g cassava leaves & stem) which are valuable feed source for crickets. Utilising these resources to farm crickets can create solid competitiveness.
  • Helping several farmers get out of poverty. Cricket One is currently working with 12 farmers and claimed that it was able to help the farmers earn up to six times more income than before.
  • Focussing on their resources on the food tech side to develop applications and novel ingredients out of crickets.

Nam further highlights that the company has established a full production chain on the farming side, from the feed, farming system, and automation.

Image by Benjamin Balazs from Pixabay

The post Vietnam-based cricket protein startup Cricket One secures funding from 500 Startups, Masik Enterprises, bringing sustainable alternative to beef, chicken appeared first on e27.