€7.1m · Other round · Foodtech · Helsinki, Finland
Finnish foodtech company Volare has raised €7.1m in new financing through Springvest, with backing from new and existing investors including Maki.vc. The capital will support the ramp-up of its first industrial-scale insect-protein plant in Pori and preparations for a second facility, according to EU-Startups and Springvest.
Factory design turns side streams into saleable ingredients
Volare feeds food-industry side streams to black soldier fly larvae, then processes the resulting biomass into protein, oil and fertiliser ingredients. Its target customers span aquafeed, pet food, chemicals and agriculture. The company says it has sold protein from a demonstration site since 2022, including products developed with Alvar Pet, VAFO Group and Alltech Fennoaqua; AgFunderNews reports that a significant share of the new plant's capacity is already covered by offtake agreements with Skretting and an unnamed global chemicals company.
The 10,000-square-metre Volare 01 plant was fitted into a former newspaper printing hall rather than built on a greenfield site. It is designed to produce up to 5,000 tonnes of protein and 2,000 tonnes of oil annually, with four people operating each shift. Those choices matter commercially: reuse of an existing building and high automation lower the capital and staffing burden attached to each tonne of planned output. But design capacity is not current production. The next test is whether commissioning can turn those engineering choices into consistent yields, quality and unit economics at industrial volume.
Contracted demand reduces one scale-up risk
Having customers commit before the plant reaches full capacity gives Volare a clearer route to utilisation than building first and searching for demand later. It also shifts the execution challenge. The company now has to ramp production while meeting feed and pet-food customers' requirements for dependable supply and ingredient performance. That makes Volare 01 both a factory and a reference asset for the planned second site.
The new financing follows a €26m mixed funding package announced by Volare in May 2025 to build the first plant. The latest capital is smaller and more operationally focused: prove the Pori model through ramp-up, then use the evidence from real production and contracted demand to prepare a repeatable expansion beyond Finland.
