Innovators of protein consistency;
feeding the needs of the world.
Introducing Stratium
Stratium is dedicated to the innovation and acceleration of the global shift to sustainable protein using insects, technology, and process.
Stratium has exclusive global access to River Road Research’s 10+ years of research and development, proprietary insect rearing processes, and global patents related to insect feed processing and leachate fermentation.
Our focus is predominantly Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) as a protein for animal feeds, aquaculture, and pet treats throughout the world.
Our patents make us special
Rabobank predicts annual global demand for insect protein in the animal feed and pet food sectors will grow to half a million metric tons by 2030, an increase of 50x from current annual demand of 10,000 tons. And, that’s just a segment of the industry.
Meeting that demand is no small task, and it is one that Stratium takes seriously. Yet just meeting the demand is a fraction of the challenge. CONSISTENCY IS PARAMOUNT! Consistency is the key to our product development. Our proprietary, patented processes deliver the expected results time after time, allowing our customers the ability to produce consistent products through consistent ingredients.
View our patents in the Our Work section.
Our team
Radu Papa
Head of Science
Radu Popa is a well published microbiologist on a mission to invent nature-based technologies that will protect our oceans and feed our planet. He has been credited with several scientific breakthroughs in the realms of safely producing organic batteries, growing algae biomass, and producing melanin from black soldier fly.
Dr. Popa has been rearing and experimenting with black soldier fly for 15 years. At Stratium, Dr. Popa is focused on creating new products and new product markets for co-products produced from black soldier fly as well as advising on the science and technologies behind to our processes.
Dr. Popa was awarded Ph.D. degrees in Microbiology and Ecology and has worked in the fields of ecology, physiology, and microbiology. In addition to being published in numerous research publications, Dr. Popa has been published in a total of 11 books and has been an inventor on a multitude of domestic and international patents.
In his free time Dr. Popa enjoys fishing and sailing.
Bobbie Armstrong
Managing Director
Bobbie Armstrong is a cleantech entrepreneur who has spent the last decade scaling and commercializing greenhouse gas solutions.
She spent her early career focused on food waste diversion practices in Canada and the United States and has a successful track record of identifying waste streams and turning them into feedstocks for commercial and industrial processes.
Armstrong has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University at Buffalo and a joint Master’s Degree in US Canadian Studies from Brock University and the University at Buffalo. While completing her master’s program she interned at the US Composting Council, and throughout her career she has served as technical expert on several working groups including the Expert Advisory Group for Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) Oil and Gas Guidance Document and Technical Expert for Canada’s Landfill Methane Recovery and Destruction Offset Protocol.
When she isn’t busy reimaging our waste systems, Armstrong enjoys spending time in nature with her young family.
Jonathan Herr
Operations Supervisor
Jonathan Herr is a well experienced operations supervisor who has worked in agricultural operations for the majority of his 12 year career. His previous farming experience gives him proper credentials to streamline complex operations, while maintaining the quality and consistency of Stratium’s Black Soldier Fly products.
Outside of Stratium, Jonathan enjoys writing songs, renovating an old home and bicycling. It was a four-month bicycle tour of the US, that galvanized his desire to protect and restore the environment.
The Newman Family
The Newmans are visionary energy leaders in New York State.
As the owners of NOCO LLC, a family-owned company that has served the community for over 90 years, the family has sought to create and scale sustainable businesses for well over a decade.
In 2010 the family formed River Road Research, a research extension of NOCO that has made several patented scientific breakthroughs in the realm of organic batteries, algae growth, filtration, and most recently black soldier fly processing.
While River Road Research’s inventions were often determined to be “too far ahead of their time”, the family recognized that the need to better manage food waste converges with the ability to produce quality proteins and agricultural co-products.
In 2023 Stratium was launched in a concentrated effort to scale protein production through black soldier fly rearing. Stratium is focused on providing consistent, quality proteins as animal feed ingredients and soil amendments that support the nation’s agricultural markets.
Our advisors
Stratium is supported by LaunchNY’s ECO Incubator, which is part of the six incubators administered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
Rich Delmerico
Rich Delmerico has over 30 years of experience as a top performing technology and business professional, with extensive and successful leadership expertise from startup to Fortune 100 companies in global product and systems development, commercialization, operations, and manufacturing across consumer, commercial, medical, printing, energy storage, and materials products. Mr. Delmerico most recently led an early stage high technology Cornell based materials startup (NOHMs Technologies Inc.) from seed to VC monies while robustly developing and maturing the technology. He also is an Adjunct at the Rochester Institute of Technology’ s Simone Center for Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Rochester’s Simon School startup coach and currently on-boarding as a NYSERDA Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Prior to NOHMs, Mr. Delmerico was a corporate executive at Kodak, including the R&D Director for the $1B revenue Traditional Consumer Businesses, driving innovation to market his entire career. Mr. Delmerico has a MS degree from Clarkson University in Manufacturing Systems and BS degrees from SUNY Buffalo in both Electrical and Industrial Engineering.
Joan Snyder
Joan Snyder is an investment banker, retired from Merrill Lynch International, where she was an Executive Director and responsible in London for the delivery of Euromarket products to corporate and sovereign clients throughout Asia and Australasia.
After leaving Wall Street in 1992, Ms. Snyder managed her own investment portfolio in agriculture and biotechnology, including development of the first commercial-scale sheep dairy and dairy products company in the US. In the late ‘90’s, she and another retired Director from Merrill Lynch formed a partnership leveraging their experience in transactional finance to work with clients in Australasia in the emerging field of public-private partnerships and spinouts from sovereign and academic research laboratories. That consultancy became Frog Hollow Inc., 100% owned by Joan Snyder. Ms. Snyder has a BS in Economics from the Univ. of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Finance, and resides in Sandgate, Vermont.