Terratis, the start-up that wanted to nip the tiger in the bud
Founded in 2024 and supported by the academic incubator Initium, Terratis is embarking on the mass production of sterilized mosquitoes. During 2026, the start-up will build a pilot bio-plant, and deploy its technology in two communities and a campsite. Eventually, an even larger industrial site will be built to increase production capacity by 2028.
Anyone who has experienced the hell of swarms of tiger mosquitoes is bound to envy these pioneers... In 2025, the inhabitants of two communities and a campsite will benefit from Terratis' technology to defeat Aedes albopictus. Its modus operandi: release armies of sterilized males to create generations of equally infertile eggs. A promising epilogue for this young start-up, after several years of maturation in the bowels of the UM's Pôle Universitaire d'Innovation (PUI).
A 60% drop in the birth rate
The origins of Terratis lie in a thesis carried out from 2009 to 2012 on behalf of theIRD on Réunion Island. Clelia Oliva applied the sterile insect technique (SIT) to the tiger mosquito for the very first time. "My thesis involved perfecting part of this process: mastering the reproduction of an insect, producing millions of them per week, sterilizing them via X-rays, and releasing them," details the start-up's founder. By 2021, the IRD will be working to provide proof of concept on some 20 hectares, and the results are proving very encouraging, with Aedes albopictus birth rates falling by almost 60% in just a few weeks in the test area. For her part, Clelia Oliva decided to "get out of the lab and do something concrete". "I knew it was a good tool and that it worked very well. It was time to move on to another scale. Initially, I thought I'd go into business through an existing company, but I ended up launching the project myself".
Soon, with the help of the Initium academic incubator, she launched the beginnings of the project. "When I told them about it, they blew me away. They opened the way for me, and told me they had all the tools to help me," Clelia Oliva recalls. In the immediate aftermath, she took part in the Jump'in création program run by BIC(the Montpellier metropolitan area 'sBusiness & Innovation Centre incubator), and was introduced to all aspects of setting up a business, from accounting to human resources management. " When you come from research, you have to train your brain to think in a different way", she explains. This first step enabled her to be pre-incubated at the BIC, and to land the Start'Oc Projet grant, a 10,000-euro financing awarded at the time by the Occitanie region.
A decisive grant from BPI France
In 2023, still in the ante-creation stage, the project also benefited from a 120,000 euro BFT lab grant, shortly before a second 90,000 euro envelope dedicated to Deeptech start-ups, both issued by BPI France. In 2024, the IRD awarded it a know-how transfer via Satt AxLr (société d'accélération du transfert de technologies), a major player in the University of Montpellier's PUI. For the seed phase, the Satt provides access to a maturation program worth almost 830,000 euros. "This investment enabled us to hire three people and buy all the equipment. It's a 15-month program that will contribute to our launch next year", adds Clelia.
Throughout his career, the BFT lab grant received via Satt AxLR has proved to be an invaluable support for the technical, market research and communication aspects. "This sum enabled me to work with my future partner Dorian Barrère, who initially worked as a consultant on the "communication" and "customer access" aspects thanks to this funding. And then he got hooked," says Clelia Oliva, who officially launched Terratis in April 2024.
3000 insects per hectare per week
Terratis, which has been awarded the MedVallée label, is currently investing in nearly 200m2 of premises in the Parc 2000 business park. "This pilot plant will enable us to develop automated breeding, with a production capacity of 1 to 1.5 million mosquitoes per week, and to start up sales. In the short term, Terratis should start its commercial roll-out with a coverage capacity of 300 hectares, initially spread over two districts from two different local authorities and a campsite. It could also be used to irrigate airports in sensitive areas, should viruses such as Zika or chikungunya spread via female tiger mosquitoes...
"In total, from 2025 onwards, we'll be able to release around 3,000 insects per hectare per week from April to November," anticipates the Terratis president. But by 2026, she'll be moving into the industrial stage with an even bigger biofactory project. "From 2028, we plan to produce up to 100 million males per week. This will enable us to protect almost 40,000 hectares of territory... The strength of this mosquito is its high reproductive capacity. The female can lay hundreds of eggs, but she only reproduces once. We want to capitalize on this weakness.
In the near future, Terratis could also apply this technique to agricultural pests such as the Mediterranean fruit fly, codling moth and Drosophila suzukii. The aim: to offer an alternative to pesticides and chemical products.