Black Soldier Fly larvae are being deployed to turn food waste into animal feed and fertiliser on an industrial scale. The UK currently lacks a profitable, large-scale insect farming industry, despite the technology’s proven potential to replace fishmeal and chemical fertilisers. This project brings together entomologists, engineers, data analysts, and food safety experts—expertise no single organisation holds—to build and test a complete, automated farming system. If successful, the system will demonstrate that BSF farming is profitable, low-carbon, and scalable in the UK. The partners aim to validate the safety and efficacy of insect-based feed and biofertiliser, clearing the final legislative hurdles. Unlocking growth finance would then allow rapid scaling: by 2040, the consortium targets over 100 sites internationally, 3,300 UK jobs, combined annual revenues of £400 million for UK businesses, and savings of 50 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. This would directly support the government’s net-zero emissions goals while creating a new, sustainable agricultural supply chain that quietly underpins food production and waste management.
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Black Soldier Fly (BSF) farming is now widely accepted as a key solution to tackling some of the world's biggest challenges in agriculture. BSF can simultaneously recycle food waste into insect-based animal feed (a sustainable alternative to fishmeal) and biofertiliser (a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilisers). This highly complex farming system requires input from experts across research, governmental and commercial sectors. No single organisation is currently in possession of all the required expertise. Whilst hundreds of scientific papers and millions of pounds have been invested globally into validating the transformative potential of BSF farming techniques, the race is still on to demonstrate large-scale, profitable BSF farming operations. The UK is home to leading BSF specialists with expertise covering the entire value chain. In 2017, partners in this application formed the UK Insect Biomass Conversion Working Group (IBCWG) to combine their expertise with the shared idea that together our combined knowledge is greater than the sum of its parts. In isolation, we are leading specialists in entomology, engineering, data analytics, machine vision, food safety and food supply chains but, together, we can deploy highly profitable and sustainable BSF farming systems. This project provides an exciting opportunity to combine our expertise and collective ambition to establish the UK as the global industry leader by developing a complete BSF farming system that is **profitable**, **sustainable** and **scalable** to leapfrog global competition. This project will realise the transformative nature of BSF farming by: * Delivering system demonstrators that converts industrial quantities of food waste into insect-based animal feed and biofertilizer using our groundbreaking, highly automated technology; * Generating the data to prove that BSF farming is **profitable**, **low carbon** and **scalable** in the UK; * Validating the **safety** and **efficacy** of **insect-based animal feed** and **biofertiliser**; and * Prove product safety and address the final legislative bottlenecks. By proving the above, we **unlock access to growth finance** which will enable us to **rapidly scale** the BSF farming industry in the UK and overseas. The partners intend to establish the UK as an international centre of excellence for BSF farming and technology. By 2040, we aim to have delivered over 100 sites internationally, create 3300 UK based jobs, generated combined annual revenues of £400m for UK tax paying businesses and delivered savings of **50m tonnes CO2** equivalent \[IBCWG\] - driving us towards the Government's targets for **net zero emissions**.
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