Aspire Food Group, the London-based business that produces food proteins from crickets, is in the hands of a receiver. A receivership order granted in the Toronto Court of Superior Justice has placed Aspire in the hands of receiver FTI Consulting Canada. The decision was based on a filing from crown corporation Farm Credit Canada, which reported that Aspire had $41.5-million in debt. But one agri-food expert doesn’t think this needs to be the end of Aspire. “I think this plant needs to survive, because there is potential there. You can actually do a lot of things with crickets,” said Professor Sylvain Charlebois Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and co-hosts ‘The Food professor’ Podcast. He feels there is a market for cricket proteins, “You can actually produce fertilizer for lawns, for plants. And obviously, I’m thinking about the food supply chain, and producing nutrients and feed for livestock in particular.” According to information provided by the company, Aspire was formed by five McGill University students in 2013. The company was launched after the team won the 2013 US$1-million Hult Prize, an annual social entrepreneurship competition that challenges students to build businesses that contribute to solving a pressing social issue. The company’s goal was to find solutions to global food scarcity using scalable cricket production. Charlebois believes company leadership missed the mark on marketing and business strategies, “Frankly, we see it all the time in businesses. Often people are creators, they’re innovators, but they’re not necessarily good managers.” Along with the London production facility, based at 2450 Innovation Dr., Aspire also has a research and development facility in Austin, TX. Company leadership, based on research from the Texas unit, also claimed that the greenhouse gas emissions from cricket protein production were more than 40 per cent lower than those generated in farmed salmon and organic chicken and turkey production. The London operation was opened in 2022, with an $8.5-million in funding from the Federal government’s AgriInnovate Program. The 150,000 sq ft facility was designed to supply frozen whole crickets that customers can further process. In November 2024, it was reported that staffing had been reduced from 150 employees to 50, with a plan to re-hire in July. Just over a dozen vehicles were in the parking lot of the plant on Tuesday morning. CTV News reached out to the receiver for information on the status of the operations but, as of this article’s posting, had not received response.
