With Cleantech Forum Asia 2025 just around the corner, it’s an opportune time to revisit some of the insights shared at last year’s event in Singapore.
The city-state is Southeast Asia’s agri-food tech hub; with that in mind, we hosted two sessions at Cleantech Forum Asia 2024 focused on sustainability innovation in the agriculture and food value chain.
In today’s blog post we’ll revisit the first of those sessions, which looked at novel approaches to valorizing waste and other side streams from agri-food production.
About 6% of global emissions are specifically linked to loss and waste in agri-food systems; double the emissions coming out of the aviation sector. When that waste ends up in landfills it decomposes and generates methane and can cause toxicity in soil and water through leaching.
And these are just the ecological impacts of food loss and waste. In a world with a growing population and a shrinking amount of available land to grow crops, reducing wastage is more urgent than ever to strengthen global food security.
Novel Feedstocks
Prefer is one company that’s aiming to solve this problem, while also tackling the closely interrelated issues of risk and carbon intensity in one of the most fragile agricultural supply chains there is: coffee.
The Singapore-based start-up is upcycling agri-food byproducts like soy pulp from tofu and soymilk production, spent grain from beer brewing, and surplus bread from bakeries. It ferments these feedstocks to emphasize flavor compounds similar to those found in bean-derived coffee. The final product is a ground coffee alternative that Prefer sells to foodservice establishments, as well as prepared coffee products that it distributes itself.
Speaking at Cleantech Forum Asia 2024, Prefer co-founder and CTO DJ Tan explained that coffee is typically more emissions-intensive, in terms of carbon dioxide emitted per kilogram of produce, than dairy products, chicken, fish, or pork.
“Agriculture is also undermining itself, as climate change reduces coffee yields,” he said. “Our process emits significantly less carbon. By our estimates, we’re about 10 times more sustainable than traditional coffee.”
Joining Tan on the panel was Kai-Ning Chua, co-founder and CMO at Insectta. Starting out as a black soldier fly farm in 2018, the Singaporean company later pivoted away from farming operations to concentrate on extraction and manufacturing technologies that can maximize the value of the waste being recycled by the insects.
“While most people associate insect farming with animal feed or fertilizer, we focus on pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and organic electronics,” Chua told attendees.
Today, Insectta partners with farm operators to extract two high-value compounds from the black soldier fly: chitosan, which is also sourced from crustaceans, and is used in various industries from healthcare and packaging to agriculture and water treatment; and melanin, which has applications in electronics and regenerative medicine.
“Our insect-sourced version has no heavy metals and higher purity [and] we can produce it at a much lower cost and make it water soluble, which is an industry first,” Chua said.
Investment in Food Waste Innovation
However, despite the apparent promise of these innovations, food waste upcycling start-ups like Insectta and Prefer continue to face challenges when it comes to convincing would-be investors.
Some still “assume we’re an insect farm,” said Chua. “Many investors know that insect farming is a low-margin, scale-driven business. We need to clarify that we’re in biomaterials, not farming. Once we do, we explain that we add economic value by producing high-purity, functional ingredients that support sustainable manufacturing.”
For Tan, too, making the economic case as clear as possible is what gets investors over the line.
“Once they see we’re addressing a real pain point – rising coffee prices and supply chain issues – they get it. Our solution is market-driven,” he said.
That approach helped the company close a $2M Seed round just a few months before Cleantech Forum Asia 2024, with participation from investors including 500 Global, Better Bite Ventures, Sopoong, Seeds Capital, and Entrepreneur First, among others.
It’s Not Just Investors That Need Convincing
Innovations like those developed at Prefer end up in products that consumers drink or eat; and in the case of Insectta, products that consumers may be applying to their skin, or using to treat wounds.
“We try to downplay the insects,” Chua said. “The idea of using insects in our medicine or cosmetics; there is an emotional barrier there. So, when it comes to our messaging, it’s very clear: We make chitosan and melanin for these industries that is more functional, that has more economic viability, and sustainability is actually in the background.”
Prefer’s strategy has been to deliberately avoid mentions of ‘waste’ in its consumer branding and marketing efforts, according to Tan.
“What we have found is that people are more willing to accept something once they have first tried it. They try [Prefer] and say, ‘Hey, this does taste like my regular cup of Joe’. And then we tell them, ‘By the way, no coffee beans were used in that’. And then we see their minds shatter in front of us.”
For more information on Cleantech Forum Asia 2025, being held 7th-8th May in Singapore, and registration options, please click here. Participate in the Powering Asia’s Agri-Food Sector with AI session, and meet some of the innovators who made our 2025 APAC Cleantech 25 list.
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