It was named as one of the Top 10 Virgin Media business disruptors to watch in the Fast Track 2017, published in The Sunday Times.
AgriProtein rears Black Soldier Fly larvae on food waste and converts that into a protein – MagMeal - for feed for use in aquaculture, livestock and pet food.
Peter Kelly, managing director, Virgin Media Business, said AgriProtein has seen an opportunity and made it their purpose to “disrupt long-established markets and practices, creating an entirely new industry to great success.”
In September, MagMeal was named the BBC Food Chain Global Champion 2017, while earlier this year AgriProtein entered the Global Cleantech Top 100 and won a CleanEquity award for its environmental technology research.
It also won the Australian government’s Blue Economy Challenge in 2016.
New hires
Mark Williams was recently appointed COO at AgriProtein; he is the former head of Nomura Investment Banking in Asia, and the company said he would be based in London.
Meanwhile, co-founder, David Drew, has relocated to Germany from the South African base to head up European development for the insect meal producer.
Sumer Shankardass, who is based in Mumbai, is heading the insect producer's South Asia push and developing projects in India and Sri Lanka. Bruce Cowley has also joined the AgriProtein team; he will head up its Middle East operations based in Riyadh; John Diene, previously CEO of one of Asia’s largest feed mill businesses, based in Singapore, is to join the head office team developing the Asian and global sales.
“We now have seven projects in the feasibility and negotiation phase, with more than 20 in the waste audit and pre-feasibility phases. In total, over 100 sites are already in our project development pipeline,” reported the company in October.