Press release: Manna Insect Oy announces Manna MIND Gen2
Agritech company Manna Insect Oy announces Manna MIND Gen2, the world’s first technology that enables converting almost any kind of space, such as a shipping container or a warehouse, into an automatically climate-controlled and -optimized insect farming facility. The Manna MIND Gen2 also optimizes power consumption, so an insect farming facility can be run even with solar panels alone, it works on all voltage levels, and enables farming insects profitably anywhere in the world, in any climate or weather conditions.
The solution’s 1st generation version is already in use with customers on five continents, and it specializes in managing the climatization of used 20ft sea containers that are refurbished into insect rearing facilities.
Manna Insect solves biowaste and animal feed problems with a set of solutions that are specialized in the utilization of black soldier fly (BSF) to upcycle organic waste into cost-efficient and nutritious animal feed and organic fertilizer.
Manna MIND is a sensor and control unit that manages all equipment within an insect rearing facility to optimize the growth or breeding conditions to be optimal at each stage of the larvae growth cycle, making the facility the perfect environment for both upcycling of biowaste at maximum efficiency and enabling the larvae to grow as much as possible during the rearing cycle, thus creating more animal feed in the form of insect protein, and better quality fertilizer as a side product.
Manna MIND enables insect farming to be operated as a completely standalone setup even in rural farms, remote islands and fish farms, or can be set up in a factory backyard or supermarket parking lot. Farming of black soldier fly with Manna Insect’s solution requires minimal human input and workload, only approx. 6 hours for the 10-day growth period, which makes the whole insect production process extremely cost-efficient and thus profitable for a farmer.
Manna Insect’s CEO and founder Ykä Marjanen comments; “The first generation of Manna MIND was tailored for 20ft sea containers, and proved that we can deploy solutions all over the world with locally available materials and equipment. We’ve shipped and installed Manna MIND units with clients on five continents during the first year of sales. Still, the cost of building the container is often too much for a chicken farmer in Kenya or a fish farmer in Indonesia, and we wanted to reach out to this enormous market segment with our new solution. The new Gen2 version is more versatile, smaller and has more features than the 1st generation MIND.”
“Manna MIND Gen2 is the world’s first of its kind from multiple aspects. First of all, it is the first such solution in the world that works on all electricity inputs from 110 to 220 to 430 V. It is extremely energy efficient and consumes less than 1kW (Manna 20ft shipping container reference setup), that allows using solar panels to operate the facility. It is also the first climatization solution in the insect farming industry that is facility independent, meaning that the facility doesn’t have to be of a certain size, but can be suited to operate different size facilities efficiently. It is designed for small local operations upcycling from 5 tn to 200 tn of biowaste in a month from one site.
Manna MIND Gen2 key features:
– AI-powered BSF-optimized (black soldier fly) control algorithms for continuous automatic environment optimization
– Any power / voltage level equipment supported from 110V to 430V (worldwide coverage)
– Up to 8 different types of equipment are supported (heater and AC, dehumidifier and humidifier, incoming and exhaust ventilation, LEDs and internal ventilation) for optimizing all insect production phases
– Optimized power consumption based on weather prediction and BSF conditions (less than <1 kW continuous power in a 20ft shipping container sized module)
– Can be used for breeding, nursing or rearing of insects, or all in the same space, making the production unit a 360-degree insect farm, a world first such facility already in operation since 2020.
– Connected to Manna Cloud for 24/7 real-time monitoring and remote control, but also works as a stand-alone solution if the connection is offline for days
– Measures and stores all relevant metrics with Manna’s custom sensor module (temperature, humidity, CO2, CO, NH3, NO2, O2)
– Detects and reports any issues with the equipment
– Intelligent alarms to notify operator of any issues
– Can be used to refurbish at low-cost any space to effective insect production from shipping containers to warehouses
Manna Insect was founded in 2018 by a group of engineers and serial entrepreneurs in Oulu, Finland. The company has been funded by private business angels from Finland and Norway, and VC funds, such as Gorilla Ventures and Kielo Growth from Finland, G-Force from Slovakia and Founders Factory in the UK. The company has been selected and attended several startup acceleration programs across Europe, incl. EIT Climate (EU), StartUp Sauna (Finland), Build-it (Latvia) and MassChallenge Switzerland, where Manna was selected as one of the winners amongst 1100+ entries.
More information available at:
Manna Insect Oy Ltd,
CEO Ykä Marjanen
Email: yka.marjanen@mannainsect.com
www.mannainsect.com