FreezeM – an Agri-tech pioneering biotechnology company that offers Breeding-as-a-Service (BaaS) for Black Soldier Fly (BSF) protein factories – announced the closing of $14.2 million in Series A funding.
Launched in 2018 as a spin-off from the Weizmann Institute of Science by three institute graduates Yoav Politi, Idan Alyagor and Yuval Gilad, FreezeM’s goal is to make insect farming simple and accessible using novel breeding solutions for the emerging BSF farming industry. Since launching, the company has developed multiple biotechnological breakthroughs for enhancing sustainable, streamlined insect protein production.
This funding round was led by a group of seasoned industrial investors and the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund), along with FreezeM’s existing investors and partners. This funding round will be used to accelerate the growth of the company’s breeding hubs network and commercialize its novel solutions at scale, accommodating the rapidly increasing market demand.
FreezeM is aiming to simplify BSF reproduction and increase protein yield through the supply of its PauseM product to BSF protein producers, tapping about $3.96 billion market by 2033 according to Meticulous Research forecast. This plays a major role in boosting insect protein production capacity for livestock and pet food while implementing a circular economy, conserving precious global farmland, and reducing ocean depletion.
Traditionally BSF breeding is a major bottleneck in industrial scale insect protein production, which requires unique bio-expertise to tackle inherent colony instabilities and technological gaps. And while there are vast off-the-shelf engineering solutions for rearing and processing, breeding challenges cannot be addressed by machinery alone. As the insect farming industry is maturing, it follows a similar trajectory to other established agricultural market segments, moving towards supply chain specialization and segmentation.
PauseM was developed to overcome the fundamental challenges of insect breeding, thus giving customers a competitive edge in the market. By eliminating the industry constraints, PauseM promotes sector growth and also facilitates scaling of the global insect protein industry.
PauseM is a ready-to-use product, which contains life-cycle ‘paused’ BSF neonates with an extended shelf-life of 14 days and consistent high survival rates of over 90%. PauseM is shipped to BSF protein facilities worldwide, stored on site and flexibly used according to production needs.
This technology also paves the way to a new decoupled BSF protein production model, separating the breeding phase from rearing and processing phases for the first time in the insect farming industry. The adoption of PauseM as an outsourced ongoing breeding supply enables increased protein production efficiency, reduces OPEX and CAPEX, and streamlines seamless scalability.
FreezeM also takes the breeding hurdle out of the equation, streamlining insect protein production and making it more efficient and accessible from new entrants to veteran market players. And the newly established decoupled protein production model marks the first time the breeding phase is separated from the rearing and processing phases in the insect farming industry. The company currently supplies PauseM globally, catering to small to large-scale BSF protein factories.
KEY QUOTE:
“The current funding round will enable FreezeM to embed our technology globally at scale and accelerate the growth of our breeding hubs in Europe and Israel, thereby driving successful commercial expansion. Our technology unleashes the insect market from its shackles and will propel the insect protein market to fulfill its true potential,” said
- Dr. Yuval Gilad, Co-founder and CEO of FreezeM
