Volare finishes a 5,000-ton insect protein plant in Finland

Up to 5,000 tons of insect protein a year can now come out of a former newspaper printing plant in Pori, Finland, where Volare has finished Volare 01. The plant is also built for up to 2,000 tons of insect oil a year, and the Finnish company says the build came in on schedule and within its €15M budget, about $16.6M, according to AgFunderNews.

Two pet food brands already use Volare's protein. Alvar Pet makes dog treats with it, and Dagsmark, part of VAFO Group, makes cat food.

The plant runs on black soldier fly larvae fed with local food-industry side streams and needs four people per shift inside a roughly 10,000-square-meter plant that went up in nine months. Aquafeed maker Skretting and an unnamed global chemical company have signed offtake agreements for a significant share of capacity. Volare also raised €7.1M through the Springvest platform to ramp the plant and prepare a second factory.

Pet food customers came first

Pet food makers were among the first buyers in 2022. Dagsmark, a Finnish pet food maker that VAFO Group bought at the end of January 2024, sells insect-based cat food.

Its dry kitten and junior recipe lists insect meal at 10% and costs €4.29 for 450 g at the Finnish retailer Kärkkäinen.

CEO and co-founder Jarna Hyvönen said European pet food producers' interest in insect protein holds "as long as ingredients are of high quality and there is security of supply." Future Market Insights projects insect-based pet food growing from $1.5B to $4.0B by 2036, as we reported in August.

"Volare 01 proves that our technology and production model work at industrial scale," Hyvönen said.

Ÿnsect's liquidation sets the bar Volare faces

Volare was founded in 2021 by three co-founders, building on research at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Hyvönen became CEO in June 2025, and the company raised €26M that May, according to Tech Funding News.

France's Ÿnsect, which made protein for animal feed, pet food and fertilizer, went into judicial liquidation in December 2025 after raising more than $500M. Dustin Crummett of the Insect Institute told AgFunderNews that insects for animal feed cost 2 to 10 times as much as soy or fish meal.

Protix of the Netherlands is the other big name. GlobalPETS reported in 2023 that its Bergen op Zoom plant made 14,000 metric tons of live larvae a year.

Volare says it will compete on cost and performance rather than lean on high fishmeal prices. Hyvönen cites a dry process for protein meal that cuts energy use by about 30% and a frass hygienization step that uses about 50% less energy. She called fishmeal "a finite resource" and said the case for insects is structural.

A second plant could reach 30,000 tons

In our view, the change for pet food brands is capacity. Alvar Pet, Dagsmark and any brand testing insect meal can now talk volume with a supplier that has a finished plant.

Volare is looking at sites in Europe and beyond for a second factory with about five times the protein capacity of the first, roughly 20,000 to 30,000 tons a year. Tech Funding News reported that construction is expected to start in 2027, likely outside Finland and near side-stream partners.

Hyvönen said the key site factor is a reliable supply of side streams.

So far the named offtake customers are in aquafeed and chemicals.

Source: AgFunderNews