Driven by five people from Vigo, Galinsect is an initiative focused on the breeding and commercialization of insects to provide a source of food rich in protein, natural and of high quality. The project emerged under the umbrella of the second edition of the Business Factory Food, the accelerator of the food sector driven by the Xunta and energized by the Food Cluster of Galicia. "With a view to this call, we evaluated different types of projects focused on sustainability, circular economy and the valorization of the Galician primary sector. From that analysis we detected that what could have the greatest potential as a business was insect farming," explains Rubén Recamán, CEO of the company and one of its co-founders.

In his farm located in Cristiñade (Ponteareas) we found the insect tenebrio molitor, commonly known as mealworm. "It is interesting mainly for its nutritional profile, as it has a high content of high quality proteins, healthy fats and also chitin, which is a polymer with many applications at industrial level. It also offers great scalability for very high productions," explains Recamán.

Galinsect takes care of its entire life cycle, which goes through different phases: egg, microlarva, adult larva, chrysalis and finally, the imago or beetle. What is marketed is specifically the larva. "The beetles function as breeders. Ninety percent of the larvae are sold and 10% are reserved for colony maintenance work," he explains. As a source of protein in the market, it is especially relevant for sectors such as livestock, aquaculture or petfood, an emerging and exponentially growing field.

They recognize that their time at the Business Factory Food has been crucial for the project to see the light of day. "Being able to enter, participate in the tutoring and mentoring program with leading companies in the sectors in which we wanted to develop, such as Nueva Pescanova, Viña Costeira and Corporación Laber, opened up our field of knowledge a lot," he explains, accelerating what otherwise "would have taken us 3 or 4 years of work". The program's funding was also decisive, since it allowed them, among other things, to carry out the works to fit out the facilities (a disused poultry farm belonging to the family of one of the partners) and start with the production work.

Bioproinsect, a project aimed at maximum circularity

Since its official incorporation in 2020, Galinsect has evolved and diversified its business model towards the field of biotechnology, leading the Bioproinsect pilot project, in collaboration with the University of Vigo and with the support of the Consellería de Medio Rural de la Xunta de Galicia.

The aim is to create an insect biorefinery and scale it up industrially. First, they revalorize waste and vegetable by-products as food for their insects. The next step is to bioprocess them. To do this, they have developed a technology thanks to which "we are able to extract products with high added value, such as hydrolyzed proteins, fatty acids (omega 3, omega 6, oleic and linoleic acid...) or chitin, with a high market value for the food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical industries, etc.". In addition, the by-product generated by the insect itself, which is the manure, has a great use as a fertilizer, thus closing its complete circularity.

In this way, Galinsect, which will soon launch its first round of financing, seeks to modernize and diversify the primary sector through the use of biotechnology for the bioprocessing of insects, in accordance with the Smart Specialization Strategy (RIS3 of Galicia).