EnviroFlight is officially open and operating in Maysville.
Carrie Kuball, sales and marketing for EnviroFlight, welcomed guests and gave a brief overview of what the company produces.
“We are here to commemorate the grand opening of the very first commercial Black Soldier Fly facility in the United States,” she said. “The journey to reach this achievement started a few years ago when Darling Ingredients and Intrexon joined forces and invested in a new industry, which harnesses the potential of the Black Soldier Fly to upcycle food and feed residues to premium nutrition for animals.”
Kuball said insect production has provided new opportunities to meet protein demands across the country.
“The Black Soldier Fly are amazing little insects producing more than 1,000 times the protein per acre as compared to beef, poultry and soy,” she said. “They do this with the same or lower volumes of feed inputs and can utilize feed stocks that others can’t. It requires less water and produces less output of carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia compared to other livestock species. Quite simply, bugs can feed the world.”
Dr. Liz Koutsos, president of EnviroFlight, said the company was located in Maysville for a variety of reasons.
“It was chosen for lots of different reasons; the proximity of our feed stocks, location compared to major cities and transportation routes and just as importantly, Maysville has provided us with an amazing source of a dynamic, energetic and very educated workforce,” she said. “In addition, within the first couple weeks of me coming to Maysville, we had folks reach out from the community organizations almost the first day I was here. The sense of welcome has been overwhelming and we are very thankful for that.”
Koutsos said Darling Ingredients and Intrexon are parent companies for EnviroFlight.
“I’d like to recognize our parent companies,” she said. “Intrexon’s mission is to design and engineer living systems to address the world’s greatest challenges in health, energy, food and environmental sustainability. Darling ingredients is a world leader in converting food and feed components into things that can be used in pharmaceutical, food, feed and fuel industries. There is no better synergy I can think of to create what we have here. Harnessing the power of an insect, understanding it’s biology, driving the genetics to improve yields and performance and combining with a company that knows better than anyone how take a product and create value and get it into the marketplace as an ingredient, we are so lucky to have these companies leading us.”
Randall Stuewe, chief executive officer of Darling Ingredients and Nir Nimrodi, chief business officer for Intrexon, also spoke on their role with EnviroFlight.
“I’m reflecting back on this and to my left is John, my colleague partner and very good friend,” he said. “John came to me about years ago and said he had a business opportunity he wanted to introduce to me. He said, ‘We’re going to produce flies.’ Darling is the greenest company in the world. The products we produce are from slaughtered animal byproducts. If they’re inspected, they go to food. If they aren’t, they can go to animal food and if they can neither be fed to you or your pets, they go to fuel or converted into a BTU, but there is an ever growing portion can be put into none of those categories and have to be land filled.”
Stuewe said there is an obligation to see if it can be transformed into something usable. He also said the world is short of food, water and land and drastic measures will need to be taken to produce something new.
“When he brought me to the idea and we visited the plant we still have in Ohio, it looked like something just above a fifth grade science project,” he said. “I took it to the board room. John said in the board room that day, ‘Randy, you’re looking at the next Microsoft.’ Today is very special to me. This is a dream for us. I think there is a real neat opportunity here. We’re in stage one of learning process.”
Nimrodi said he believes the market and plant will grow quickly.
“We went to the same process at Intrexon,” he said. “It’s not very often that we get to a point where we see something real that we can hold. We develop bacteria that converts gas to liquid. There isn’t much to see there. We develop immune oncology therapy. We see the patients, but there isn’t a real therapy we can hold in our hands. Here, the most exciting thing is that this is really just the beginning. I don’t see why, in two years, there wouldn’t be 10 more plants like this. The market would buy everything we can produce; it needs everything we can produce. We hope to grow here much faster than anyone can imagine.”
According to Koutsos, EnviroFlight is officially open and producing.
“We are already officially open and producing,” she said. “We’re happy to be here in this community and looking forward to building this community in the US.”
Maysville Mayor David Cartmell said he was excited to have the company open in Maysville.
“I think Christmas has come early as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “It’s a project we’ve worked on for a long time and the state has worked on. We have the infrastructure and we had everything. We were at the right place at the right time. This is the first facility of its kind in America. They hit the ground running. I feel certain they will expand at some point.”
Mason County Judge-Executive Joe Pfeffer said he believes the company will be good for Maysville.
“It’s great news for the community,” he said. “It’s going to be a great company; a leader in the industry that they’re in. It will help put Maysville on that map in the eyes of a lot of people, so we hope good things will come and possibly with this market being successful will lead to other things.”
Mason County Industrial Authority Director Owen McNeill said he also believes the company is a good addition to the community.
“The Industrial Development Authority, and all Maysville and Mason County citizens welcome Enviroflight to Maysville for operations,” he said. “Any company that possesses the proven claim of ‘world’s first’ is an asset to any community. The technology represented in Enviroflight has the potential to be transformative, not only for the company but our region. To that end, we as a community should celebrate along with our smart, dedicated and hardworking new friends at Enviroflight. Their potential as an industry leader is limitless and I can think of no better place on earth to grow than Maysville.”
