Our project was born in mid-2016, at the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto when one of our founders, Guilherme Pereira, decided to veture into a final degree project, where he was proposed to develop an energy bar with incorporation of insect powder.

My first contact with insect was simply amazing, because without ever having tried such food before, Prof. Luis Cunha challenged me to taste a variety of dehydrated insects and lucky me that of course i couldn’t say no, because the insects where trully delicious.

Guilherme Pereira, Portugal Bugs

After our graduation in the summer of 2016, we were present in a seminar at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, related to insect production and after this the project Portugal Bugs begun, in our garage in a small cardboard box, where the air conditioning came from a small heating lamp, in order to understand and optimze the creation of mealworms with the main goal of making this rearing method automated.

Portugal Bugs has always aimed to stand out for the production and transformation of insects, and in this way we have been developing formulations of food products that used insect powder in its genesis. This objective led us to dream bigger, and thanks to the fact that we were awarded in several national entrepreneurship contests, in 2018 it was possible to start our pilot insect-breeding unit.

Between production and transformation, the increase in knowledge about entomophagy was never left out, and we were always aware of the need to be present at various events in Europe, and in November of 2017 we attended the annual IPIFF conference where we had the opportunity to meet two other portuguese companies, Entogreen and Nutrix who, like us, had the ambition to make this sector a reality in Portugal.

From that moment, what is now called Portugal Insect – Portuguese Association of Insect Producers and Transformers, created on 17 May 2018, began to be designed with us being one of the three founding companies of this association.

Portugal Insect was undoubtedly a milestone in the history of this sector in Portugal, the one that started only with three companies, now has more than ten associates, including companies and scientific institutions.

Guilherme Pereira, Portugal Bugs

Portugal Bugs is pilot production unit is in Perafita, and we are farming Tenebrio molitor and Acheta domesticus.

We have a main goal to build our own industrial production of insects and lead the production sector for human consumption in Portugal, also we are trying to gather in our company, other producers that believe in our thoughts and ambitions

In addition, we assert ourselves as pioneers in the transformation of insects in Portugal and we aim to be the first company to place quality processed products on the national market.

The daily practice of consuming insects is common to more than 2 billion people, spread across the planet. Which show us that this pratice is already common in several cultures.

Climate change is complety evident nowadays, and therefore, it is mandatory to choose attitudes that help to minimize these consequences.

The world population is also expected to reach close to 9.7 billion people in 2050, which makes it imperative to innovate the agri-food system and start looking to new sources of protein to be able to feed all this population.

Portugal Bugs beliees that insects can play a fundamental role in solving these problems.