Food Recycle turns waste into animal feed

Startup business Food Recycle is seeking $3 million through crowd funding to commercialise technology that turns food waste into animal feed.

After successful trials with layer hens, prawns, barramundi, and aquaponics, the NSW based company is seeking the cash via crowd-funding platform, Swarmer to scale-up in Australia and New Zealand.

Food Recycle CEO Norm Boyle said: “The funds raised will be put towards facility mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and systems design, to allow for the first commercial-scale production facility to be built under the Food Recycle patented technology and knowhow agreement.

“The funds will also help with cash flow requirements as we look to appoint a technology and knowhow licensee for Australia and New Zealand, which will construct multiple production facilities, with Food Recycle receiving royalty payments on the sale of feed by the licensee.

“The licensee will be required to construct a minimum of 25 production facilities over a 10-year period, and we would expect 12 of these in the first five years.”

Food Recycle was founded by father and son team Norm and Nathan Boyle and boasts former NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Trade & Investment Andrew Stoner as a non executive director..

The Swarmer crowd-funding campaign – which enters a three-week Expressions of Interest (EOI) phase on August 8, followed by a three-week investment phase – allows individual investments starting from $100, with investors given shares in the company.

Food Recycle said its technology had been trialed by by CSIRO, Western Sydney University (WSU) and University of New England (UNE).

Food Recycle gave no details of its process other than to say it involves five key steps to convert food waste into animal feed.

“A fundamental point of difference of the Food Recycle technology is that we collect and process different waste streams separately.

“This enables us to store different dry materials of similar nutritional value and use them as ingredients when formulating our complete feeds.”

According to the company two tonnes of food waste can be converted into one tonne of complete feed suitable for poultry, pigs, and aquaculture.

Picture: Food Recycle/Norm Boyle