Edible Insects
2014 – 17
Edible insects came on to our radar in 2014. We saw them as a potentially viable & sustainable future protein source, and sought to know more. Connecting with 4Ento and its leader Ana Day, our awareness of the challenges in feeding our growing global population grew. We decided to create an in-depth market study into the business opportunities insects offer – and what roadblocks needed to be overcome to get the market going. We tried crowdfunding the creation of the report without great success. We believed in the great potential of insects, so we self-funded the report in conjunction with 4Ento.
From there, we got funding from Tekes (nowadays Business Finland) to map out a Finnish Ento-Business Ecosystem. Our task was to develop a business roadmap for creating an edible insects ecosystem. Within this project, we created a public whitepaper, an online training course and presented our findings at industry conferences such as Health Ingredients Europe. We then worked with Luke, the Finnish Natural Resources Institute, and Pikes, the Pielinen Karelia Development Center, to map how consumer uptake of edible insects may occur. This led us to create a Model of Diffusion, backed by in-depth consumer attitudinal & lifestyle analysis.
Resources
We have not been working on edible insects since 2017. Our projects on edible insects are now old and the market intelligence within them outdated. However, you might still find usefulness in the analysis on how a novel ingredient like this might enter the market and what the obstacles are. These materials also provide an interesting historical snapshot to a developing ingredient market in a boom phase.
