Insect Technology Group appoints UHY Hacker Young administrator

UHY Hacker Young has reportedly been heading an administration for UK headquartered waste management firm Insect Technology Group since February. The news comes in spite of the company having received £10 million in investment from the UK Government in late 2020.

The global cost of food waste is estimated at $990 billion every year, with 30% of the food produced globally ending up being squandered. This also takes an environmental toll, with land, energy, water and inputs added to the production of some 1.3 billion tonnes of produce ultimately leading to unnecessary CO2 emissions.

Headquartered in Guildford, Surrey, Insect Technology Group (ITG) was founded in the hopes of helping combat this. The company works to commercialise industrial scale insect-based technologies to reduce food waste – and is perhaps best known for its AgriProtein technology to that end. AgriProtein looks to harness the power of insects to up-cycle waste into high-quality feed ingredients for further food production.

Initially the firm attracted a large amount of investment. In 2018, for example, an undisclosed, single listed investor sank a reported $105 million into ITG. Meanwhile, October 2020 saw it secure £10 million from a UK Government programme aiming to showcase the potential for insect protein and waste management at scale in Britain to entrepreneurs, governments and agricultural stakeholders.

However, according to a statement on ITG’s LinkedIn five months ago, it faced a “challenging year” during 2020’s pandemic. Now, the company has announced that it has appointed administrators.

While ITG is yet to comment on the situation, it appears that its global expansion efforts may have contributed to its financial undoing. In 2017, the business announced it had partnered with construction conglomerate Christof Industries, as it sought to build 100 new factories around the world.

In February 2021, however, the firm admitted it was in the process of restructuring its flagship Cape Town facility, and wider South African operations. According to specialist farming news site FeedNavigator.com, this is the same time that professionals from UHY Hacker Young were tasked with handling the administration process for the firm.