The commercial facility will be located in Järvenpää, Finland. Once opened, the new facility will produce approximately 5,000 tons of black soldier fly (BSF) proteins and lipids annually.
The Finnish insect producer said it is not yet announcing the operational date of the new facility or the total cost of construction.
However, Volare’s CEO, Tuure Parviainen, told us that the company has ambitious plans: by 2030, numerous production facilities will be operational across Europe. “Volare directly employs 15 people and has an extensive network of consultants and external experts who drive the development of plants.”
The startup uses by-products of food production, including oat shells, potato waste and distillates from the brewing industry, as rearing substrates for the BSF larvae. The by-products of the food industry are almost limitless in scope, the producer said. “Current estimates put the available amount of raw materials at around 90 million tons per year – in the EU alone.”
Low environmental impact
And the Volare team claims that the environmental impact of insect production is negligible compared to traditional protein and oil feed feedstocks, generating only a fraction of the emissions of those other inputs.
In addition, Parviainen said the company has developed and patented a process to produce protein and oil from BSF Swiss stone pine without significant addition of water. “Because of this, the process uses significantly less energy than other similar methods and results in 50% lower operating costs.”
Applications for Volare’s BSF-derived products range from pet food to aqua feed, from cosmetics to oleochemical applications and organic fertilizers.
“Our demonstration facility is fully operational and already serving customers in the aquatic feed and pet food sectors, providing ingredients for targeted product launches and industrial testing.”
launch pad
Years of research and development of insect-related technologies preceded the company’s formation as an independent entity, and Volare said his team of engineers, agronomists, operators and researchers is now building on those decades of experience.
The basic work for the Volare technology was carried out in the incubator VTT Launchpad. The founders came together when they explored an ultra-efficient way to keep nutrients in the food chain. After VTT’s spin-off, the owners of Volare acquired all of the insect-related technologies that had been developed.
“Volare’s technology and the opportunities it offers is an excellent example of how VTT provides a platform to tackle major global challenges and generate exponential hope,” said Lotta Partanen, manager of this Finnish start-up program, in 2021.
Flying in June 2021 announcedthat it had raised €0.7 million in a funding round led by Maki.vc, a seed-stage venture capitalist based in Helsinki.
