Volare opens 5,000-ton insect protein plant in Pori on €15m budget

Volare has completed a 5,000-ton-per-year insect protein factory in Pori, Finland, delivered on schedule and within its €15 million ($16.6 million) CAPEX budget. The plant also yields up to 2,000 tons of insect oil annually, and a significant share of that capacity is already sold.

The facility runs with four people per shift. It occupies a former newspaper printing plant and feeds black soldier fly larvae on locally available food-industry side streams. Offtake agreements are in place with aquafeed giant Skretting and an unnamed global chemical company.

Volare is not a newcomer to commercial sales. The company has moved protein from a demo-scale site since 2022. Its customer record includes dog treats developed with Alvar Pet, cat food with VAFO Group, and rainbow trout feed through a collaboration with Alltech Fennoaqua. Its protein has also entered organic poultry feed.

The Pori plant opens with fresh capital behind it. Volare raised €7.1 million ($7.7 million) through Springvest, and the company is now preparing a second industrial-scale facility.

What do EU feedstock rules mean for the model?

European rules block insect farms from using post-consumer food waste and most animal by-products as feed. CEO Jarna Hyvönen told AgFunderNews the restriction is not a dealbreaker. "Over time, we see that the rules can be loosened… however, our business model is not based on this change," she said.

Her argument is one of cost engineering. Feedstock matters, but so do power supply and usage, labor needs, and wastewater costs. Smart choices on those items, she said, reduce unit costs and let Volare serve customers "who are de-risking their supply chains by sourcing from Europe."

On insect oil, Hyvönen pointed to a tightening market. "The markets are in an interesting situation due to new regulations affecting other markets using the same oils as pet foods and feeds," she said. The pressure spans chemicals, biofuels, and feed, and she suggested it could make insect oil more competitive.

Pet food producers, she added, are interested "as long as ingredients are of high quality and there is security of supply."

How does the plant cut costs?

Volare belongs to the second wave of insect ag builders, and Hyvönen said today's entrants have learned from the pioneers' mistakes. "It doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel and having as much as fancy technology as possible is not the point," she said. "The point is to make it efficient and make it work."

That philosophy shows up in specific process numbers:

• A proprietary dry process for protein meal production cuts energy usage by roughly 30 percent.
• A hygienization method for frass uses about 50 percent less energy.
• Automation is selective: some stages are automated, not the whole line.

For aquafeed buyers, the pitch is supply security as much as nutrition. "Security of supply is a big thing and insect ag is closer to scaling than many of the other novel protein solutions," Hyvönen said. "When it comes to product quality, it's about digestibility, palatability, and health benefits as well as price and availability."

The plant lands as the broader insect protein sector recalibrates after a shakeout that has pushed players such as Innovafeed into what that company calls an industrialization phase, scaling production while trimming R&D headcount.

What does this change for feed and pet food buyers? A European supplier with industrial volume, sold-out capacity, and cost discipline that does not depend on regulatory relief. The second facility will test whether the Pori formula scales.