Finnish company Volare opened Volare 01, its first industrial-scale insect factory, in Pori on October 26, 2026, and BeBeez International reports that the startup also raised €7.1 million to prepare a second plant. The site is designed to produce up to 5,000 tonnes of insect protein and 2,000 tonnes of insect oil per year from black soldier fly larvae.
The €15 million facility covers 10,000 square metres and, according to the reports, was delivered on schedule and within budget. Springvest handled the funding round, and Maki.vc is named as a new and existing backer. Volare says it has sold protein commercially from a smaller demonstration site since 2022, so this is a scale-up of a working business rather than a first sale.
This story lands in the software category on tech-insider.org because modern food-tech plants run on control systems, sensors and data pipelines as much as on biology. A factory built for four people per shift leaves most of the day-to-day work to automation. Nordic infrastructure is already a theme here, as our report on the Finnish order to halt Google forest work showed, and Volare adds an industrial-biotech chapter to that picture.
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What Volare Announced on October 26
Three pieces of news arrived together. First, the plant in Pori is open. Second, the company closed a €7.1 million financing round. Third, management says it is already preparing for a second industrial-scale facility. Outlets including BeBeez International, Tech.eu and AgFunderNews carried the story on the same day, and all three describe the opening as the start of a commissioning and ramp-up phase rather than full-rate production.
That distinction matters. A factory with a nameplate capacity of 5,000 tonnes of protein does not produce 5,000 tonnes on day one. Biological processes need to be tuned, lines need to be balanced, and customers need consistent batches before they commit to larger volumes. Volare’s own language reflects this. The company talks about commissioning first and the next plant second.
The headline wording some outlets used, which says Volare plans a second factory, deserves a careful read. The available reports say the company is preparing for or planning the next site. None of them confirm a location, a construction start, a completion date or a final cost. We treat the second factory as an intention, not a funded build.
Volare 01 by the Numbers
The table below collects every specification that appears in the reports. Anything not listed here, such as the second factory’s site or timetable, remains unconfirmed.
| Item | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Company founded | 2021 |
| Factory name and location | Volare 01, Pori, Finland |
| Opening date | October 26, 2026 |
| Floor area | 10,000 square metres |
| Capital expenditure | €15 million |
| Protein capacity | Up to 5,000 tonnes per year |
| Oil capacity | Up to 2,000 tonnes per year |
| Staffing design | Four people per shift |
| New funding | €7.1 million via Springvest |
| Commercial sales since | 2022 (demonstration-scale site) |
Two details stand out. The plant produces two main commodities, protein and oil, and the oil capacity equals 40% of the protein capacity in tonnage terms. Fertiliser is listed as a third product line, though the reports give no volume for it.
How Black Soldier Fly Larvae Turn Side Streams Into Protein
Volare feeds food-industry side streams to black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens). The larvae convert that material into biomass, which the plant then separates into protein meal and oil. What remains after harvesting is sold as fertiliser. The reports do not name the specific side streams Volare uses, and we will not guess at them.
The commercial logic is simple to state. Food processors produce residues they must dispose of or downgrade. Larvae turn those residues into ingredients that livestock, fish and pets can eat. The reported applications are aquafeed, pet food and poultry feed, with insect oil and fertiliser as additional outputs.
The engineering challenge sits in running living organisms at industrial throughput. Temperature, humidity, feed rates and larval density all drive yield, and small drifts compound across thousands of square metres. That is why the staffing figure of four people per shift tells us more about the plant’s instrumentation than about its headcount.
The €7.1 Million Raise and Who Backed It
According to Tech.eu, Volare closed €7.1 million in new funding through Springvest, with participation from new and existing investors. Maki.vc is the only investor the reports name. The announcement does not break out how much each investor contributed, and it does not give a post-money valuation, so we cannot compare the round against earlier ones.
Set against the €15 million that built the plant, the new money equals roughly 47% of the capital expenditure. That ratio is simple arithmetic and says nothing about how Volare financed the factory itself. Reports link the raise to the broader scale-up, and the company has not published a use-of-funds breakdown in the coverage we reviewed.
A raise of this size looks small next to AI hardware rounds. Our recap of Tenstorrent’s $1.5 billion week of AI funding shows how lopsided that comparison looks. Industrial biotech raises in the single-digit millions, and it does so while carrying physical assets that investors can inspect.
Customers and Partners Already on the Record
The reports name four commercial customers or partners: Skretting, Alvar Pet, VAFO Group and Alltech Fennoaqua. The company’s reported end markets are aquafeed, pet food and poultry feed, and the reports do not map each name to a specific product. Having named buyers before the plant reaches full output reduces one of the biggest risks in new-build industrial projects, which is capacity that no one has agreed to buy.
We do not have contract terms, volumes or prices for any of these relationships. The fact sheet we worked from does not say whether the agreements are binding purchase commitments or looser collaborations, so readers should treat the list as evidence of commercial interest rather than guaranteed revenue.
Volare’s sales history helps here. The company has sold protein from its demonstration site since 2022, which means buyers have already tested the product in real feed formulations. That track record is the strongest argument that the new plant’s output will find a home.
Four People Per Shift: What Automation Has to Deliver
The reports say Volare 01 is designed to run with four people per shift. Spread across 10,000 square metres, that works out to one worker for every 2,500 square metres on each shift. Plants with that profile depend on sensors, programmable controllers and software that flags a drifting parameter before it ruins a batch.
Volare has not published details of its control stack, vendors or data tooling, so everything in this section is analysis of what such a design implies rather than a description of the company’s systems. The pattern is familiar from other physical-AI projects. Our coverage of Enact Intelligence’s $30 million pre-seed for robotics and of Toyota’s entry into the humanoid race shows investors backing machines that replace labour. Volare’s bet is quieter, because it automates a biological process rather than building a robot.
What the Software Layer Probably Does
Any plant built to this staffing level needs at least four software functions. It needs real-time monitoring of climate and feed conditions. It needs traceability from each side-stream delivery to each finished batch, since feed buyers demand it. It needs alerting that routes problems to the small crew on shift. And it needs historical data that engineers can mine to raise yield. Those are our inferences, not company disclosures.
The Capex Math: €15 Million Against 5,000 Tonnes
Simple division gives investors a rough yardstick. The table below shows ratios derived from the reported figures. They are crude because they ignore oil revenue, working capital and the time it takes to reach nameplate output, yet they give a sense of scale.
| Derived metric | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Capex per tonne of annual protein capacity | €15M / 5,000 t | €3,000 |
| Capex per tonne of combined protein and oil capacity | €15M / 7,000 t | About €2,143 |
| Oil capacity as share of protein capacity | 2,000 t / 5,000 t | 40% |
| New funding as share of capex | €7.1M / €15M | About 47% |
| Floor area per person per shift | 10,000 m² / 4 | 2,500 m² |
These numbers come from our own arithmetic on reported inputs. Volare did not publish them, and the company did not state a price per tonne for protein or oil. Without selling prices we cannot estimate revenue, margins or payback, and we decline to guess.
The Second Factory: What Is Confirmed and What Is Not
AgFunderNews frames the next step as exploring a second plant, which is more cautious than the headline some other outlets used. Volare is preparing for a second industrial-scale facility, and BeBeez reports that the company expects it to have about five times the protein capacity of Volare 01.
Jarna Hyvönen, Volare’s CEO, put the sequencing plainly in reporting by Tech.eu: “Our focus right now is commissioning and ramping up the first factory, but we’re already planning the next one. The goal is to replicate the model we’ve developed across Europe and beyond.”
Why “Five Times” Is Not a Specification
Five times 5,000 tonnes implies roughly 25,000 tonnes of annual protein capacity. That is arithmetic on a company expectation, not an engineering spec, and no report confirms it. The site, the permits, the financing and the technology scale-up all remain open. Building a plant five times larger than a first-of-its-kind facility that has not yet reached full output is a significant jump, and investors will want to see Volare 01 hit its numbers first.
Historical Context: From a 2021 Start to Industrial Scale
Volare was founded in 2021 and began selling protein commercially in 2022. Four years later it has an industrial plant. The timeline below lists only the dates the reports confirm.
| Date | Milestone | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Volare founded in Finland | Reported |
| 2022 | Commercial protein sales begin from a demonstration-scale site | Reported |
| October 26, 2026 | Volare 01 opens in Pori | Reported |
| October 26, 2026 | €7.1M raised through Springvest | Reported |
| Not announced | Second industrial-scale factory | Preparing, no date or site |
We did not verify sector-wide figures for this piece, so we cite none and make no claim about how other insect-protein companies have fared. What the Volare case does show is a sequence investors like to see: a small site that sells product first, then a larger plant sized against demand the company can already point to.
Competitive Picture: Insect Protein Versus Conventional Feed Inputs
Volare’s products compete with established feed ingredients such as fishmeal and soy for protein, and with other fats and oils for the oil stream. We have no verified price or nutrition comparison from the reports, so this section stays qualitative.
- Supply source: Insect protein draws on food-industry side streams, while conventional inputs depend on fisheries or crop land. The reports present this as Volare’s core selling point.
- Location flexibility: A factory can sit near its side-stream suppliers. Hyvönen’s comment about replicating the model across Europe points to that approach.
- Scale: Soy and fishmeal trade in vastly larger volumes. At 5,000 tonnes of protein, Volare 01 is a niche supplier for now.
- Product breadth: One plant yields protein, oil and fertiliser, which gives Volare several revenue lines from one input.
Agriculture technology has seen similar scaling questions before. Our look at farm drones treating 16.4 million acres in 2025 shows a farm technology that moved from novelty to routine once the economics held up. Insect protein now has to prove the same point on cost.
Market Impact for Finland and European Feed
For Finland, the plant adds a domestic ingredient producer to the feed chain. Pori gets a 10,000-square-metre facility, and the staffing design of four people per shift means a small workforce. Fewer jobs per square metre is the trade for higher automation. Whether food processors nearby benefit depends on side-stream arrangements the reports do not detail.
For the wider feed market, a 5,000-tonne producer will not move global prices. The signal is about proof of concept. If Volare 01 delivers steady quality to Skretting and the other named buyers, other feed makers will gain confidence in insect inputs. Advanced-materials projects elsewhere face the same test, as our piece on Thailand’s $690 million materials bets illustrates.
Readers following developer and infrastructure topics can find more of this coverage in our software category, where we track the systems layer behind physical industries.
Five Predictions for Volare and Insect Protein
These are our judgments, not company guidance. Treat them as scenarios to test against future announcements.
- Ramp-up will take longer than the opening suggests. Commissioning a biological process usually takes many months to reach nameplate output, so expect Volare to report utilisation figures in stages.
- The second factory will not break ground before Volare 01 proves its yield. Management’s own wording puts the first plant ahead of the second.
- A site announcement will come before a financing announcement. A larger plant needs a location tied to side-stream supply, and investors will want that detail first.
- More named offtake partners will appear. Skretting and the other three buyers show the pattern, and a bigger plant needs more of them.
- Plant data will become a sales tool. Feed buyers value traceability, so software that proves batch quality will matter to Volare’s pitch.
What to Watch Next
Several signals will show whether the opening turns into a durable business. The first is the pace of production against the 5,000-tonne protein and 2,000-tonne oil capacity. The second is any disclosure of selling prices or contract lengths with Skretting, Alvar Pet, VAFO Group and Alltech Fennoaqua. The third is any word on a location, permit filing or financing structure for the second factory.
The last signal is Volare’s own communication. Management has chosen to describe the second plant as planned and not yet committed. If that language hardens into a dated construction plan, the story shifts from a single plant to a multi-site European rollout. Until then, the verified facts amount to one finished factory, €7.1 million of fresh funding and an intention to build bigger.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Volare 01?
Volare 01 is the first industrial-scale insect factory run by Volare, located in Pori, Finland. It opened on October 26, 2026, covers 10,000 square metres and cost €15 million to build.
How much can the Pori plant produce?
The plant is designed for up to 5,000 tonnes of insect protein and 2,000 tonnes of insect oil per year. Those are design capacities, and the plant must still ramp up to reach them.
How much money did Volare raise?
Volare raised €7.1 million through Springvest. Maki.vc is named as a new and existing backer, and the reports do not list the other investors or a valuation.
Is the second factory confirmed?
No. Volare says it is preparing for a second industrial-scale facility, and BeBeez reports an expected capacity of about five times Volare 01’s protein output. No location, construction date, completion date or final cost has been confirmed.
Who buys Volare’s products?
The reports name Skretting, Alvar Pet, VAFO Group and Alltech Fennoaqua as commercial customers or partners. The end markets are aquafeed, pet food and poultry feed, with insect oil and fertiliser as additional products.
What does the plant use as raw material?
Volare processes food-industry side streams with black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens). The reports do not name the specific side streams.
How many people work on each shift?
The facility is designed to operate with four people per shift, which points to heavy reliance on automation and monitoring software.
