During the May 2019 – Nov 2019 Phase 1 project, we interviewed over 20 insect protein experts and potential customers and organized pilots to gain a complete understanding of the FreezeM solution’s technical acceptance, demand, willingness to pay, pricing validation, and expected conversion rates.
FreezeM supplied ready-to-use eggs to a beta customer that further grew the larvae for feed in aquaculture. The resulted larvae were successfully used in a fish feed experiment which helped us understand the support we need to provide to our customers to ensure their success, to validate the performance of our eggs in terms of hatchability and growth rate and to improve our business model and pricing strategy. In addition, we have launched a joint steering team with a feed mills company to plan for a insect protein factory which will buy eggs from FreezeM. Lastly, we have created a consortium with three leading European stakeholders in the insect protein market for pilot testing and industrial implementation of FreezeM's technologies in future insect protein factories across the EU.
Feedback to and reception of our solution has been sincerely positive throughout all three projects. The collected pilot data provided us with sufficient data to create a development plan towards TRL8 and also generated relevant technical and user-related content. Willingness to pay, price validation, and expected conversion rates were demonstrated in each particular case. Phase 1 also helped validate the business concept by demonstrating the market need for our solution as well as evaluate the prospects for European growth and international expansion, consistent with the commercialisation plans. FreezeM has also undertaken several complementary actions in order to maximize its market success, by defining and implementing the communication needs (product positioning and marketing message) to be used during the commercialization phase, thereby creating the basis for successful product launch.