Insects Limited 2024 Recap
By Tom Mueller, CEO of Insects Limited. Inc.
At the beginning of each year, I like to inform those of you following along with our newsletter about some of the internal events at Insects Limited. Many of you tune in to find out about the latest in stored product insect research, relevant case studies for practical purposes or best practices, but you do not get to see the things we accomplish as a company to grow and to pursue our purpose: To help protect the world’s food and cherished belongings from damage by insect pests.
Around the Insects Limited Office
We have now spent one full year in our new building, The Insects Limited Center for Stored Product Protection. This building was designed and constructed specifically to help us achieve our purpose, and it has allowed us to raise the standard for what a quality pheromone monitoring product can do for our customers. We have given over a dozen tours to friends of the company who have traveled to us for the reason of touring our new facility or to those who were in the area and made it a point to visit. All are welcome.
The heart of the Center is the lab, and we take that seriously. We have invested a substantial number of resources toward ensuring our entomologists have what they need to make a difference in the world. The buildout included counters and cabinets throughout the lab and our chemical room, as well as equipment allowing for better research on our target pests and development of our quality products. The building was constructed with a special ventilation system keeping the pheromone volatiles we use to produce our products away from the pheromones we are using to test products and run research projects. Many of these upgrades have allowed us to put an even larger focus on our quality control protocol. We take pride in having the highest quality of pheromone monitoring products in the market, and focusing on the lab is one way we prove it.
The lab is not the only area of excitement around the office. Throughout 2024, we have evaluated packaging machines in hopes that we can streamline our production processes. After a few trips to machine vendors and a visit to Pack Expo in Chicago, we identified, purchased and installed a 17-foot packaging machine that has cut our packing time down by 83% and allowed for some cost savings. Before making a change like this, we surveyed our customers who unanimously told us that the use of bags will be better and less wasteful than the boxes we have used for years. These bags have been selected to preserve product shelf-life and are also 100% recyclable. 93% of our finished products will arrive with a new look.
The packaging machine has forced us to look at our operational processes. We have taken the opportunity to streamline our operations, reducing waste and increasing efficiency. We have rearranged our warehouse and production room allowing for optimization of space, and organization. In short, doing so will take us one step in the right direction to reach inventory turn goals, and create optimized cash flow allowing us to invest back into the company and the industry.
Insects Limited’s People
Insects Limited is growing. We added two new people to our staff last year. One in production and one to the executive staff. Micah Page is joining the team as COO and Integrator (see previous articles written by me on EOS to learn what an Integrator does). Micah is fitting in nicely with the team and is here to help us organize and improve our processes, keep us all accountable to our commitments, and remove obstacles getting in the way of achieving our goals. Helping to run a company is nothing new to Micah, but the insects and pheromones are. It has been wildly impressive to see her initiative in working to learn our products, our services, and the things that make Insects Limited truly unique in this industry.
With this hire, Pat Kelley, BCE is taking on an opportunity new to Insects Limited as the Managing Director of the Center for Stored Product Protection. Pat is approaching 39 years of service with Insects Limited this month. In this role, Pat will be leading the professional services division of Insects Limited.
As a company, Insects Limited has always provided expert consultation, education, insect identification, and many other forms of service for hire. He has initiated many of these types of services, but we plan to ramp these services up even more to help our customers and to help this industry. There is a gap forming. Historically, universities would fulfill the need for research on these insects. This will continue, but we are seeing a decline in the number of these programs throughout the country at the university level. We aim to fill this gap and do so with practical research and service.
For information about the services provided at the Center, please check our website or contact us. It is exciting to know someone with the passion and experience of Pat will be transitioning to a role like this as we move the company and the industry forward.
Insects Limited’s Numbers
Insects Limited had a great year. We achieved 12% growth in revenue and maintained our goal gross profit margin. This is important because we have so much we would like to accomplish with and for this industry. We must generate a respectable gross profit to accomplish these goals.
One number we measure at Insects Limited is square feet protected by our products. To explain, we have a standard “recommended spacing” for each of our products. This spacing is based on both the biology and behavior of the insect as well as practical pest manager inspection recommendations. We create this measurable by multiplying our recommended spacing to the number of products we sell. Our 10-year goal at Insects Limited is 1,600,000,000 square feet protected. That means that all the products we sell in one year will provide monitoring and help with the protection in 1.6B square feet. That is equivalent to over 57 square miles or 27,778 football fields all connected to each other.
To reach this goal we must start smaller. In 2024, our goal was to make enough products to help protect 800,373,643 square feet, and we did it!
Insects Limited has provided enough quality pheromone monitoring products to the industry to help professionals and consumers protect 838,477,000 square feet.
This is equivalent to 14,557 football fields, or slightly more than the square footage of Manhattan. That means if Manhattan was a big warehouse of food and textiles, our products would have helped alert pest management professionals to a stored product insect infestation happening in that warehouse.
This is the stuff we get excited about around the office at Insects Limited, helping to protect the world’s food and cherished belongings from damage by insect pests.
In 2024, we focused on four things:
1) Improving our processes and efficiency
2) Creating the highest quality of pheromone monitoring products available to the market
3) Providing a standard of customer service unmatched by any other pheromone provider
4) Creating and following the science of our target pests
Mission accomplished.
