Miha Pipan is the co-founder and chief scientist of Better Origin, a company which develops modular technology for the processing of waste biomass, such as food, with the help of insects. He moved to England after finishing high school when he enrolled in the University of Cambridge to study natural sciences. At one of the student competitions, seven years ago, today’s business idea was born.
“We were given the challenge of how to solve the problem of food waste. My first thought, since I come from the Slovenian Karst, was of course pigs and prosciutto, but there are many legal restrictions in this area, so we abandoned it. Then came the idea of insects. This field was still in its infancy at the time, about 15 articles were published on the black soldier fly with which we are now working, most of them in the 1980s and 1990s. For comparison, there were 300 of them until June this year,” says Pipan.
“In the early years, we had to work hard and be resourceful to develop the technology that is in our products today. Of the four founders, two are still in the company today, me and the CEO of Fotis Fotiadis.”
Small insect breeding factory
The concept behind Better Origin is bioconversion with the help of insects. “We have developed a modular technology for growing and processing insects. We help food and retail companies, farmers and other customers who produce waste biomass to limit or eliminate it,” says Pipan. As he explains, worms eat waste biomass, such as food, which can then be fed to animals or processed into products such as detergents, shampoos and the like. “In the future, we could even make textiles.”
The company’s main product is the X1, a kind of insect breeding factory in a standard container. This contains a module for food preparation, which turns waste biomass into a kind of pulp, and a system for regulating the atmosphere, i.e. heating, cooling and ventilation. Most of the bin is occupied by a room with smaller bins containing worms of various ages that move through the system. “In a week or two, depending on the cycle, the insects grow a lot – if you bring in a few grams, you get a few kilograms out,” explains Pipan.
Plans: major projects, exterior, employment
In the future, according to Pipan’s predictions, they will also undertake some larger projects. “We have already presented the X2 prototype this year – it is a slightly larger module that can be combined and adjusted. But we also have projects for larger farms and companies that produce more waste. It’s about integrating modular container technology on old facilities, we call it Origin1 Factory. Here, too, we use our core technology from the X1.”
Source: Anja Zaletel, Finance. The complete article in the Slovene language is available HERE.