ARC Ento Tech partners with Central Coast Industry Connect for innovative waste trial

An innovative Somersby biotech start-up has partnered with the region’s peak manufacturing body to commercialise a world-first waste recovery process using a legion of special flies. Here’s how.

What do you get when you combine the veracious larvae of the black soldier fly, a mechanical process and a partnership between an emerging biotech company and the region’s peak manufacturing body?

The commercialisation of a waste recovery system that has the potential to revolutionise the amount of rubbish ending up in landfill.

That is the hope of a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by ARC Ento Tech and Central Coast Industry Connect (CCIC) that will help the Somersby start-up commercialise its innovative, patented technology to convert mixed waste into three usable bi-products being a high grade insect-based agricultural feed, a nutrient rich fertiliser and an industrial “reductant” which can be used in the same way as coking coal.

The process converts mixed waste into a fertiliser, larvae-based chicken feed and a product that can be used like coking coal. Picture: supplied

ARC Ento Tech is the brainchild of brothers Ramon and Ricky Atayde, one a mining engineer and the other and entomologist, who’s light bulb moment led them to discover a way to combine their experience to up-cycle almost 100 per cent of mixed waste in a sustainable and commercially viable way.

They patented their ARC Process and will now work with CCIC to find a local food manufacturer to develop a commercial trial of the technology.

ARC Ento Tech uses a two-step process — biological and mechanical — to convert mixed waste.

Black soldier fly larvae is used by ARC Ento Tech to process organic material in mixed waste. Picture: supplied

On the biological side the company has recruited nature’s super grubs in the form of black soldier fly larvae, which can double their body weight in a day chewing through rotting organic waste.

Looking more like a wasp than a typical housefly, black soldier flies do not transmit bacteria, disease or bite and their larvae remain as maggots for about three weeks before they “self harvest” and crawl out of decomposing waste where ARC Ento Tech can turn them into a high protein chicken feed.

Their poo, or frass, is then turned into a nutrient rich fertiliser, which thanks to their superior gut contains no bacteria such as E. coli.

Black soldier flies are bred in captivity.

And the larvae used to eat waste. Pictures: supplied

As part of the trial ARC Ento Tech will build a machine that will carry out the “mechanical” process of removing all the other non-organic waste such as plastics, reduce it down and turn it into a hardened brick that can be used like coking coal.

CCIC executive director Frank Sammut said the local company was “flying under the radar” with world leading technology that, when commercialised, could significant impact mixed waste at an industrial and domestic level.

“We don’t need to go outside the region to find solutions to some of our problems,” he said.

Mr Sammut said it was expected to take about three months to develop the mechanical process with results from the trial to start being evident after about six months.

He said while other technologies had used black soldier fly larvae those had to be done in batches whereas ARC Ento Tech’s was a “continuous process”.

ARC Ento Tech MD Ramon Atayde said the innovative technology could establish the coast as a “pioneer in this space and a true model of a circular economy”.