IN Brief:
- The Pori facility has a designed annual output of up to 5,000 tonnes of protein and 2,000 tonnes of insect oil.
- Black soldier fly larvae convert approved food industry side streams into ingredients for animal feed and other industrial uses.
- A €7.1 million financing round will support the first factory’s ramp-up and plans for further European capacity.
Volare has completed its first industrial scale insect protein factory in Pori, Finland, a €15 million project designed to convert by-products from food manufacturing into feed ingredients. The 10,000 square metre facility, called Volare 01, has a stated annual design capacity of up to 5,000 tonnes of insect protein and 2,000 tonnes of insect oil. Its completion is accompanied by €7.1 million in fresh capital raised through Springvest.
A ceremonial opening took place in June, before the latest construction and financing milestones. Commissioning continues, so the quoted annual tonnages remain design capacities rather than realised output. The next operating challenge is to synchronise larvae rearing, harvesting and ingredient separation through successive production cycles without interruptions between stages.
The factory occupies a former newspaper printing plant, allowing Volare to reuse an industrial building rather than construct an entirely new shell. The company reports that the project came in within its €15 million capital budget. The production system is approximately 1,000 times the scale of the demonstration operation. At that size, feeding and moving larvae, controlling rearing conditions and maintaining downstream equipment have to be coordinated across far larger volumes than in the pilot plant.
Food industry side streams provide the starting material. Approved plant-derived residues, including material unsuitable for conventional food use, are fed to black soldier fly larvae, which convert nutrients from the substrate into insect biomass. Processing the harvested larvae yields protein meal and oil, while residual material may be put to fertiliser uses where permitted. The composition and condition of each incoming stream influence both insect growth and the specification of the finished ingredients.
That dependence on the incoming material also creates a regulatory constraint. European rules limit the substrates that can be used to rear insects destined for feed, so a circular process cannot simply absorb arbitrary catering waste or animal by-products. Segregation by suppliers, traceability and incoming quality checks are therefore essential parts of the production system. Variations in moisture or nutrient content must also be managed if rearing conditions and subsequent ingredient batches are to remain predictable.
The Pori process integrates rearing, material handling, harvesting and downstream separation. Volare says that automation allows the site to operate with four employees per shift, while its proprietary dry processing method is intended to avoid some of the energy demand associated with conventional protein meal manufacture. The company reports that the electricity-powered plant uses no fossil fuels and generates no process wastewater. Those design choices will have to be assessed against the energy consumed per tonne of saleable product at operating scale.
Volare estimates that its final product processing uses approximately 30% less energy than competing insect protein systems, alongside lower labour and capital requirements. These are company comparisons rather than independently established industry averages. Electricity use per tonne, larvae yields, operating availability and the proportion of output meeting customer specifications will determine the plant’s actual manufacturing cost as production increases.
Feed customers are already familiar with Volare ingredients from earlier production: the company reports protein digestibility above 90% and sales into aquaculture, pet food and poultry feed. It has an offtake agreement with aquafeed supplier Skretting, and says a significant share of planned industrial capacity is already contracted. Neither the exact contracted tonnage nor the delivery timetable has been disclosed, leaving the pace at which the Pori plant converts capacity into shipments uncertain.
Consistent specifications will be important as customers increase volumes. Feed recipes are calculated around protein and fat content, amino acid supply, digestibility and microbiological quality; changing an ingredient can affect both nutritional targets and the behaviour of material during pellet manufacture. Producers therefore need repeatable batch data and reliable deliveries before substituting large volumes of conventional feed components. The commercial price of the alternative ingredient remains part of the qualification decision.
Volare originated from research at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and has supplied insect protein commercially since 2022. Its demonstration factory allowed the team to test rearing and ingredient quality before investing in the larger Pori site. At industrial scale, disturbances in one stage are harder to isolate: a change in the feedstock supply can alter larval development, which in turn affects harvesting schedules and the load presented to downstream processing equipment.
A €7.1 million financing round raised through Springvest, with backing from new and existing investors including Maki.vc, will support ramp-up at Pori and preparations for further capacity. Volare is considering a second industrial factory, although its location, construction schedule and intended output remain undecided. Expansion therefore remains separate from the capacity already built in Finland.
The factory’s next milestones are steady operation across the full rearing and processing chain and deliveries against existing customer commitments. Consistent protein and oil specifications, rather than nominal design capacity alone, will govern how much of the Pori plant’s output enters established feed formulations.
