Company Performance Metrics
- Vicken Haleblian: Co-founder
- Andy Torosyan: Co-founder
Vivotein's zero-waste process uses black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) to convert free food waste into profitable insect protein and plant fertilizer. In fact, the COGS can be zero to negative. Our five-year-old test facility in Ontario, CA takes in 10-20 tons of waste daily and produces 20-25 tons of dried larvae and twice that in frass
(organic fertilizer) monthly.
After 8 years and $12 million in friends and family investment, we are ready to move to a larger 'city-sized' facility. We are roughly break-even in our Ontario test facility (and this is without ever having sold the frass, which has a market value almost equal to the insects themselves, and for which we just received regulatory approval). The $6mm expansion round that we are looking for willtriple our capacity to 75 tons of dried larvae and 150 tons of fertilizer a month, and make us very profitable. This puts, us on a path towards debt and equity financings of larger muni- and metro-sized facilities that produce 180 tons and 450 tons of dried larvae per month, respectively.
Vivotein is an extraordinarily impactful company. We prevent food waste from entering landfills and converting to methane, which is 30x worse than CO2. Our larvae are a superior substitute for ocean-destroying fishmeal (so we eliminate fishmeal) and deforestation-inducing soy monocropping (we reduce reliance on soybeans). Our fertilizer is organic and prices at a premium, and we produce no waste. Our children will one day marvel that any organic waste was ever prevented from circulating back into the food chain using the BSFL, nature's apex decomposer.
Vivotein has the leadership, know-how, vision, and waste partnerships to build facilities in every one of the 37 US cities with 500K or more people, and of course we can expand internationally as well.
We'd love to schedule a further conversation. We have a data room with a video virtual tour, our financial model, a cap table, and legal docs. In short: we are ready to talk expansion.