“I found larvae in the kitchen, what do I do? »
This is (approximately) what Cédric Provost’s spouse told him on the phone, somewhere around 2016, while he was traveling.
“At the time, each larva was very important, so I asked him to take the larvae and put them back in the tank, because we couldn’t afford to lose any,” says the president and co-founder of ‘Entosystem.
Of such black soldier fly larvae, the company will have 400 million permanently, in the factory inaugurated on May 23 in Drummondville.
The result of a $66 million investment, the 100,000 sq. ft. facility provides it with the largest insect production capacity in North America, the company claims.
“We have larvae up to the ceiling,” comments Cédric Provost, about the plant and not his condo.
These whitish, plump little beasts will grow and feed happily in large bins filled with vegetables, fruits and other unfit food scraps that would otherwise have gone to landfill.
Once they have taken a sufficient size, the larvae will be dried and transformed into nutritious flours intended for animal feed. The residues in which they have wallowed, transformed by them, will be used for their part as fertilizers.
Entosystem plans to produce 5,000 tons of succulent protein larvae and 15,000 tons of fertilizer approved for organic cultivation each year, while recycling 90,000 tons of organic matter.
But back to our introductory conversation.
In the mid-2010s, Cédric Provost was raising black soldier fly larvae in his condo in Sainte-Thérèse, while his partner Jean-François Dépelteau, co-founder of Entosystem, was doing the same in the basement of his Montreal home.
Eager to “change the world by growing a few vegetables”, the two partners had become aware of certain contradictions in the agricultural environment.
“In general, a farmed fish is fed with three to five wild fish”, gives as an example Cédric Provost. “We tried to see if there was a better way to feed these animals. One thing leading to another, we realized that the black soldier fly was not only a better source of protein, but in addition, we could feed it with food waste, which is another very big problem in our society. »
In addition to its nutritional qualities, the larva of the black soldier fly is renowned for its rapid growth. “She will be able to grow 10,000 times in 10 days,” says Cédric Provost. To give an image, take a rabbit, come back ten days later, and it has become an elephant. »
Despite the studious experiments that had caused some excitement for Cédric’s wife, the two partners quickly came up against the limits of their entomological skills.
They enlisted the services of Christopher Warburton, a young immunology graduate who had started breeding black soldier flies while working in pharmaceutical research.
“It took six years of research and development to come to today”, informs Cédric Provost.
Although its head office is in Sherbrooke, Entosystem has set up its factory in Drummondville, near the major highway of the 20, on the route of its partner Sanimax’s trucks. At the rate of 250 tonnes a day, they will come directly there to unload their cargoes of expired food, collected from grocery stores and restaurants.
Automated systems will fill large bins with them, in which the larvae will then be deposited. Robotic arms and forklifts will store them in high racks, where 30,000 bins will be kept for a six-day transit.
“Every day, we will move 5,000,” says Cédric Provost.
After these six days of feasting, the larvae will have consumed everything, leaving the residue of their digestion in their tanks.
These boxes are then removed and their contents sifted to separate the larvae and their residues. Once dried, the residues will be used as fertilizer. After passing through the dryer, the larvae will be sold whole, or pressed to be transformed into flour and oil.
“In six days, we transform waste that is no longer useful and that was potentially going to landfill into two value-added products, in a zero waste factory,” sums up the president.
Where do these larvae come from, do you worry? They are raised in an inaccessible section of the factory, to protect its industrial secrets.
One larva out of 100 is preserved to let it turn into a fly and then reproduce.
Some sections of the plant are already in operation, but major production is expected to start towards the end of June. The company currently employs 45 people, including entomologists, biologists, engineers. It plans to double its workforce by the end of the year.
As surprising as it may seem, “for everything that is larva, everything is sold in advance, assures Cédric Provost. We have customers who are going to make dog and cat food with this and are anxiously awaiting our product.”
Another step without stumbling for Jambette. The Lévis company, manufacturer of outdoor playground equipment, has just launched the construction of a new factory. But this is a step aside, in a way: the company acquired the land adjacent to its headquarters to build a building with a total area of 45,000 square feet. The investment amounts to approximately $18 million. The project aims to support the company’s growth, which has been maintained at more than 15% annually in recent years, thanks in particular to its success in the Canadian and American markets. Jambette will keep part of its current building, but production will be entirely transferred to the new factory, which should open in the spring of 2024. “It’s not a move for a move”, informed Marie-Noël Grenier, president of the company, in a telephone conversation. “We are organizing our factory to be more productive. The objective is not necessarily to increase the workforce, but to improve our productivity. Founded in 1983, Jambette has approximately 90 employees.
Millenium Plus enters a land of plenty. The distributor and manufacturer of roofing and building envelope components, which has factories in Saint-Hubert and Brampton, Ontario, has acquired the small manufacturer of insulation materials Isox Manufacturing, located in Cocagne, New Brunswick. The Quebec company, which has a hundred distribution points across the country, and the New Brunswick company, which employs less than a dozen people, “are joining forces to revolutionize the roof insulation market in Canada “, Argued the Facebook page of Millenium, member of the Superteck Group. The transaction will retain local jobs, expand the range of products offered in the regional market and create “new opportunities for the future”. In an interview with the newspaper L’Acadie nouvelle, the president of Millenium, Sylvain Lortie, explained that he had tried to acquire Isox for the first time a few years ago. It was its president, Joël LeBlanc, who took the first steps this time. Isox has developed innovative products for the slope insulation of industrial roofs.
MSH Pharma’s health outlook has suddenly improved. The Mont-Saint-Hilaire company has just been bought by Jaâfar Zerhouni, who has been president since 2021 of this subsidiary of Endoceutics. This news comes three days after Endoceutics was itself acquired by the American company Cosette Pharma on May 23. The Quebec company and its subsidiaries placed themselves under the protection of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act in the fall of 2022. The Mont-Saint-Hilaire plant prides itself on offering the largest capacity production of suppositories and vaginal ovules in North America. In particular, it manufactures Intrarosa, nicknamed “the female Viagra”, a treatment for vaginal atrophy related to menopause. New owner of MSH Pharma, Jaâfar Zerhouni says he wants to ensure the well-being and future of his 85 employees by putting his 15 years of experience with the company to good use.
No less than 34 participants, including many contractors, have taken part since May 22 in the visit to France of the Association of Suppliers of Chantier Davie Canada, the largest Canadian trade mission related to shipbuilding since the end of the Second World War.
