Insect-based aquafeed ingredients start-up InnovaFeed secured an additional €40 million ($45.5 million) of financing Thursday from a new group of international investors led by French private equity company Creadev.

With more than €55 million ($62.5 million) in financing secured in 2018 - including the company’s series A funding round in February - InnovaFeed said the support of these new investors will enable it to significantly accelerate its development and to establish insect production as a key segment of tomorrow’s agro-industrial landscape.

InnovaFeed plans to invest more than €200 million ($227.3 million) in the launch of five new production sites by 2020.

Throughout 2018, the company said, it has laid the foundation to scale up its industrial and commercial activity.

“This financing operation validates the soundness and the maturity of InnovaFeed’s model, both from the stand point of the project’s purpose and from its economic viability,” the company said.

Following the implementation of new European regulations in late 2017 allowing the use of insect protein in aquaculture, InnovaFeed launched a pilot site which kicked-off its industrial production.

Thanks to this first production site, InnovaFeed in partnership with French retailer Auchan, was the first to propose fish that have been fed with insects to end consumers.

Building on its successes of the first half of the year, the company announced in September the construction of a new production site in partnership with Téréos, a French a cooperative sugar group, which will increase its production capacity to 10,000 metric tons of protein per year.

The new investors will join historical investors, including Olivier Duha (cofounder of Webhelp) and the Partners of Accuracy, and banking players structured around Crédit-Agricole with, among others, Caisse d'Epargne, BNP and HSBC.

They are taking over from the company's early investors such as Alter Equity or Finovam.

InnovaFeed said the participation of these larger investors will enable it to strengthen the team, which is expected to triple in size by the end of 2019, while it will also be able to scale up its production model -- including international expansion -- by the end of 2022.

"We believe that the success of our project will rely first and foremost on building a world class team, with strong values," said the founders.

"It will also require deploying our model on new geographies, starting with Europe and the Unites States."

Aquaculture

Insect-based aquafeed ingredients producer secures €40 million funding