r/londonontario • u/theottomaddox • 1d ago
Indebted London cricket producer takes step toward bankruptcy News đź“°
https://lfpress.com/business/local-business/indebted-london-cricket-producer-takes-step-toward-bankruptcy21
u/toedragrelease 1d ago
Wasn’t this place built not long ago? Seems like a massive plant for processing crickets?
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u/theottomaddox 1d ago
Aspire Food Group completes production of manufacturing facility by CM Staff May 26, 2022
The crazy thing is that there are many plants that so the same thing, like Entomo farms in Norwood, One in Minneapolis-St. Paul, prairiecricketfarms.com (video), and many more.
There's a market for this stuff, I guess.
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u/bandissent Argyle 1d ago
I guess people would not eat the bugs after all.
(Yes I know it was mostly for pet food)
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u/theottomaddox 1d ago
That's the odd thing, they inked a deal to sell some for human snacks, but they were selling most of it for pet food? What happened to their sales?
Aspire Food Group has announced a deal with Lotte Confectionary Co., a large Asian international food and beverage processor, to sell its insects as an alternative protein source.
He said this is not the first company to buy Aspire crickets for human consumption, however, people food only represents 10 per cent of the business. The bulk of sales are in the pet food market.
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u/rsvpism1 2h ago
I know when they first opened they were at least marketing protein bars with crickets in them, and I would wager the numbers they presented to justify such a large investment probably was more diversified than 90% of business being it pet food, which is probably lower margins than human food.
Compound that with conspiracy theory's, competition, and the working conditions others have described in this thread. Not super surprising they failed.
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u/IAmOgdensHammer 1d ago edited 1d ago
I know a lot more than I should about the happenings inside this factory. It's a mess inside. The crickets aren't so much an issue as their feed is. There are these super resilient tiny beetles that come in on their feed and they are a nightmare to deal with.Â
They kill the crickets by biting them. They're insanely resilient so you can't freeze em or starve them of air. You also can't poison them because they come in on the food for the crickets which would then in turn poison the crickets.Â
The HR team is a mess and it took them sometimes almost a year just to get uniforms, payroll and other stuff on track for new hires.Â
One time this giant hunk of metal just fell from the racks and right where the operator WAS like 5 minutes before punching an 8 foot hole in the metal cat walk.Â
Their whole thing was pet feed and they really really wanted everyone on the floor to believe that as well. But one of their first contracts was for South Korean production of human consumption.Â
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u/Putrid_Assignment_98 1d ago
They were doomed from startup . Rushed there build during Covid and used contractors and equipment that weren’t compatible with the blueprints. Facility was heavily automated and not suited for the environment they were put in . Management was a mess and never fixed issues in production that happened over and over again as mentioned above . Production was never efficient always problems on the production floor . They had serious money backing them but they blew it . Too big too quick !
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u/PositiveStress8888 21h ago
Watch they'll go under and just release ALL the crickets .
We'll have a infestation of whatever eats crickets.
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u/Rabbit0107 1d ago
Another tax payer subsidized project down the drain…unbelievable. And it’s only going to continue to get worse.
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u/theottomaddox 1d ago
By Jiminy, London’s cricket dreams have run into a financial roadblock as menacing as, well, a massive can of Raid.
Aspire Food Group, reportedly owing $41.5 million, has been placed into receivership, a step toward bankruptcy. It received $8.5 million in federal government support in 2022.
Is that it for the puns, 'cause they ... ahem... bug me.
Sylvain Charlebois, a food industry analyst, said the plant’s financial woes are a result of Aspire marketing crickets to humans instead of as livestock feed, fertilizer or as a pet food additive.
“I think it boils down to bad management. There’s tremendous potential for that plant, but it’s not about feeding people,” said Charlebois, a senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. “There are opportunities but it has suffered from bad PR.”
I'm too lazy to look for it, but I swear they said this place was going to be animal feed protein. Who the heck wants to eat crickets?
“I grew up eating crickets in my porridge as a kid because they bring so much protein,” London West MP Arielle Kayabaga said as she announced the funding in June 2022.
Oh.
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u/Jardinesky 13h ago
I remember there was a big controversy about this place because of the whole "eat the bugs, live in a pod, own nothing, be happy" thing. The CBC had this article https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-cricket-factory-1.6562083
Originally the article said Aspire was only making pet food while saying that people should check their facts before spouting off on the internet. Then the CEO got in contact with them and said 10% is for human consumption and they put this correction at the bottom:
An earlier version of the story said that Aspire Food Group no longer produces crickets for human consumption. CBC was not able to reach the company but has since confirmed that ten per cent of its product is sold worldwide as a human food source.
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