Cashmere's Beta Hatch wins big $$$at Flywheel

Insect Entrepreneurs
Cashmere's Beta Hatch wins $135k at Flywheel event

WENATCHEE -- Cashmere's Beta Hatch was selected as the 2019 Flywheel Investment Conference winner and received a $105,000 investment award from "angel investors" in North Central Washington during the April 18 event here.
Beta Hatch received another $25,000 in funding and was voted by the audience as the conference favorite, taking home a $5,000 cash prize. As an added bonus, North 40 Productions offered Beta Hatch a highlight video to capture their experience at the conference.
Beta Hatch industrializes insect production for animal feed to create more sustainable and predictable nutrients for poultry and aquaculture. Beta Hatch’s secret sauce includes proprietary breeding stock and genomic tools, trade secret processes to grow insects more efficiently and the equipment and know-how to produce protein at 5,000 times the acre yield of soy.
Beta Hatch is gearing up to build their first commercial scale facility in Cashmere, where they will be using waste heat from a data center to fuel their insect production. They have plans to rapidly deploy dozens of farms to scale the production of insects as a new crop.
"At Beta Hatch, we see these problems as opportunity. Our insect-rearing technology converts mealworms and their waste into high-value proteins, oils, and nutrients for agriculture. Our IP enables insects to cost-effectively meet the global scale of demand for animal feed and crop fertilizer," stated CEO Virginia Emery.
"Beta Hatch is farming insects, we're doing that as an animal feed ingredient," said Emery. "We're farming mealworms. They're a superbug. They can grow in really dry environments, they grow indoors year-round. We get quite a lot of production in our facility. We're working on the technology to scale up the production of insects and we're going to be doing that in Cashmere."
Beta Hatch is coming to town with big ideas and tiny insects - the company uses technology to produce mealworms and its waste into animal feed. Its agriculture based area of expertise will fit perfectly in Cashmere's agricultural heavy industry, according to Emery.
"Beta Hatch is connecting key resources for the agriculture community by creating products for animal feed and crop fertilizer with new technology. We're eager to see the future growth of their production facility," said Gina Imperato, Cashmere Chamber of Commerce manager.
In order to meet growing demand for meat production, Beta Hatch industrializes insect production to provide livestock feed with the goal of being a more sustainable and predictable feed.
"The whole area is built on production of food and we really like that because that's the core business of what we do. We're excited to be in a community where we have that in common with our neighbors," said Emery.
"I have family over here so my business and I have been coming to the Wenatchee area for almost a decade to visit and explore, and we just really love this place," said Emery. "We see the area as a lot more affordable to have a manufacturing business versus being in Seattle right now. We really are excited because of the combination of economically making sense and also being in a farming community."
According to Emery, the company is expecting to hire between 10 to 20 people in the immediate forecast. Following its first year in Cashmere, Emery estimates dozens of more jobs will be available.
"By 2050, we will need to double global meat production to keep up with growing demand. The current means of producing livestock feed are inefficient and costly," stated the company via its website.
Beta Hatch also lists these facts:
• 30% of crop production goes to feed livestock.
• Up to 60% of feed and food is wasted
• makes up 50% of the cost of our meat."
"As our community grows, the value of "a better quality of life" continues. So frequently visitors stop in looking to relocate and request visitor or real estate information. Securing diverse economic development and growth in Cashmere promotes a vibrant and visible community," said Imperato.