The dream team?

Following this week’s announcement that Cargill had invested heavily in the innovative microbial protein producer, Dr Shaw spoke to Fish Farming Expert about the likely impact the deal will have on his company.

“Independence is wonderful but growing companies is not east and at the end of the day we’re dealing in a commodity, in a big market and we wanted to look to one of the big guys to give us a helping hand. If you’d asked me a year ago who our ideal investor would be I’d probably have said Cargill,” he reflects.

Cargill’s contribution was part of a series C funding package worth $30 million and, Dr Shaw is thrilled by the amount of investment the company’s concept has attracted.

“$40 of the $50 million we’ve raised to date has been invested in the last calendar year,” he points out, “which offers a telling insight into our momentum and the moment.”

It also helps to bring forward Calysta’s plans to have both fresh samples and commercial volumes available to feed producers, as the remnants of the forerunner of Calysta’s Feedkind protein – which was produced by a subsidiary of Statoil in Norway during the 1990s – may have degraded in the intervening years.

“Although there are still a few tonnes left over from the Norwegian factory it’s too old to give out as commercial samples. However, now that we’ve secured the full investment we can be confident that our market introduction facility, in Teeside [in Northeast England] will be operational by the fourth quarter of the year, and that we will be able to provide contemporary samples into the market before the end of 2016.”

Interestingly, it seems that Cargill’s involvement will mean that the first commercial scale facility for Feedkind production will be in the USA, not the UK or Norway.

“Cargill has every intention of building a world-scale plant in the US,” Shaw reveals, “for the commercial production of Feedkind, and this should be operational by 2018.”

Despite Cargill’s vast portfolio of livestock feeds, Dr Shaw sees aquaculture as the natural market for the protein.

“The focus is absolutely on aquaculture at the moment – there’s a market for up to 400,000 tonnes of fishmeal replacement in Europe alone so it might be some years before we start to look at pigs and chickens,” he quips.

However, he by no means sees it as being limited in its geographical spread or to any particular fish or shellfish species.

“The product has already been approved by the EU, but I’d love to sell it across the world and might break out to non-salmon species too,” he reflects.

Options open

Despite Dr Shaw’s excitement at teaming up with Cargill, however, he is also keen to point out that he is by no means limited to selling his product to Cargill/Ewos.

“I welcome the new directors and Cargill – the largest protein producer in the world – bring channel distribution they’re a world class brand and it’s great to have close ties with Ewos.

“However, we’re not selling ourselves to Cargill – we still own the IP and the technology – and we want other producers, like Marine Harvest, to know that we’re open for business. I genuinely believe it will be the gold standard of fishmeal replacement and I don’t want to limit our sales just to Ewos,” he concludes.