KEIL is a leader in the Korean insect farming market due to its advanced automation process and innovative product strategy. The company started with a one-room office space and $27,000 in start-up capital, but managed to leapfrog the odds and build Korea's largest automated insect farming plant in seven years.
KEIL was founded by Young Wook Kim, a former university professor who made a career change into this emerging industry, bringing with him a deep understanding of technology and biology, as well as a belief in the sustainable potential of insects. Their product line has expanded from human food to pet snacks to nutritional supplements. In particular, their pet specialty brands “Insect Power” and “rTM Omega 3” under “Pet Smith”, as well as “Hope Biscuits” and “Mealworm kkang” with annual sales of over one million units, are highly sought after by both domestic and international markets.
It has not been an easy voyage for KEIL, and Kim reveals that KEIL's success has not come easily. While the potential of the insect market is huge, it comes with many challenges.
Despite the huge potential and demand for insects as an alternative source of protein, the bottlenecks in the industry's development currently still lie in production costs and yields.
A 26% increase in fishmeal prices in Peru 2023 has further fueled the market's interest in insect protein. However, the reality is that their production costs remain high and yields are much lower than expected, both for insect yellow meal for food and insect BSF for animal feed. In addition, the closure of hundreds of companies engaged in insect-related businesses has been a wake-up call for the industry.
Young Wook Kim points out that in order for the insect industry to stand out, it must develop a unique approach. Many would like to utilize insects as an alternative to fishmeal, but global fishmeal companies have invested tens of millions of dollars and utilized hundreds of deep-sea fishing vessels to catch and produce fishmeal around the globe. Compared to ocean-caught fishmeal, insect farming is much more expensive and requires the establishment of farms, installation of automated equipment and processing. So how much money is actually invested in the insect industry? Specifically, what is the size of the investments made by large global companies in the insect industry? Are these investments comparable?
The insect industry is not yet able to match the fishmeal market in terms of cost, and more innovation and investment will be needed to become a real competitor.
Kim is cautiously optimistic about the future of insect farming, emphasizing that it is not enough to dream without accompanying it with a realistic business plan and sustained financial support. In addition, he warns of the dangers of believing that insect feed costs can be reduced simply by relying on food waste or other cheap raw materials, as KEIL's experiments have shown that feed costs are the key to the effectiveness of aquaculture, and that feeding methods must be environmentally friendly and sustainable. Through scientific management and innovation, insect feed costs can be reduced by 30%, which sets a benchmark for the entire industry.
In the process of continuous exploration and optimization, KEIL continues to improve product quality and cost efficiency, and advocates respect for feed regulations and improvement of the farming environment. Despite the many challenges facing the insect industry, KEIL's story proves that a sustainable future is becoming a reality through technological innovation and a disciplined business strategy.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)