Volare Opens Insect Protein Factory in Finland, Raises €7.1M

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Finnish technology company Volare has completed Volare 01, its first industrial-scale protein factory, in Pori, Finland. The 10,000-square-metre plant is meant to produce up to 5,000 tonnes of insect protein and 2,000 tonnes of insect oil a year from food-industry side streams.

The company also secured €7.1 million in new funding through Springvest, with backing from new and existing investors including Maki.vc. The money is to support the ramp-up of the first factory and preparations for further facilities.

Volare 01 is a 1,000x scale-up from the company's demonstration plant. It was delivered on schedule and within its €15 million capital budget. "Volare 01 proves that our technology and production model work at industrial scale," says Jarna Hyvönen, CEO and co-founder.

An old newspaper printing house

The factory was built inside a former newspaper printing facility in nine months. Hyvönen says that probably saved at least a year compared with a new building. Printing houses also have sturdy floors made for large machinery, which suits the work.

It is designed to run with four people per shift, and all its processes run on electricity rather than natural gas or other fossil fuels. For this first industrial-scale site, Volare did not bring in outside consultants for project management or engineering and kept project control in-house.

Flies, side streams and customers

Volare uses black soldier flies to turn food-industry side streams into insect protein, oil and fertiliser. The company says its production model needs four to ten times less capital expenditure, about 50 per cent fewer employees and 30 per cent less energy in end-product processing than competing insect protein producers. Its protein meal delivers over 90 per cent digestibility.

The protein has been used commercially since 2022. Examples include insect-based dog treats developed with Alvar Pet, Dagsmark's insect-based cat food, and rainbow trout feed made with Alltech Fennoaqua. A significant share of Volare 01's capacity is already sold, with offtake agreements in place with Skretting and a leading global chemical company.

Hyvönen talks about fishmeal. The FAO's 2026 report says 84.5 per cent of assessed marine fish stocks were fished at their maximum sustainable level or overfished in 2023. Industries using fishmeal are growing by perhaps five to ten per cent a year, she says, while the amount of fishmeal is not.

The sector has had failures. French startup Ÿnsect raised more than €600 million before going into judicial liquidation in 2025. Denmark's ENORM, which raised €50 million in 2022, was declared bankrupt on 30 October 2025. Germany's FarmInsect entered insolvency proceedings in 2026 and ceased operations. Hyvönen says many of these problems were company-specific rather than industry-wide.

Beyond the production model, Volare has patents and its own production designs. Hyvönen says a dry-processing method gives high product quality while cutting energy costs. The protein meal is already used commercially in aquafeeds, pet foods and poultry feeds.

The company is now focused on commissioning and ramping up the first factory, but is already planning the next. The second factory is planned to have roughly five times the protein production capacity, and Hyvönen says the goal is to replicate the model across Europe and beyond.

Volare was founded in 2021, and its technology comes from research at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Its demonstration plant ran for more than four years and remains operational.

Source: Tech.eu