Just two years after the Trudeau government put up nearly $9 million to help build the world’s largest edible cricket factory, the facility is dramatically cutting staff and production in what they say is an extended retooling.

Aspire Food Group, which cut the ribbon last year on a 150,000-square-foot edible cricket factory in London, Ont., has just laid off two thirds of its workforce and significantly cut back shifts, saying they need to make “some improvements to its manufacturing system.” 

Speaking to the trade publication AgFunderNews, Aspire CEO David Rosenberg said the company “will be running the production line four times a week instead of two shifts a day every day. We’re 150 people down to 50 and we plan on hiring back up in July.”

This is despite very generous grants from the Trudeau government. In June 2022, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced a grant of “up to $8.5 million” to build a “commercial facility to produce cricket protein.”

What resulted was a factory billed by Aspire as the “world’s largest cricket production facility.” As per a CBC profile published at its grand opening, the factory was to house four billion crickets at any one time, and churn out 13 million kilograms of edible crickets each year.

Click here to read the full article.

*

Click the share button below to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Don’t Miss Out on Global Research Online e-Books! 

Our thanks to Dr. William Makis for bringing this to our attention.

Featured image: Illustration of a cricket on a fork. PHOTO BY WILDPIXEL

Source link