Volare has finished building the first industrial-scale black soldier fly plant in Finland, and it is the rare insect-protein announcement that comes with a capex figure. Volare 01, in a former newspaper printing facility in Pori, was delivered “on schedule and within its €15 million ($16.6 million) CAPEX budget”, according to AgFunderNews. It is designed for up to 5,000 tonnes of insect protein and 2,000 tonnes of insect oil a year. Divide the budget by the protein capacity and you get roughly €3,000 per annual tonne. That is our arithmetic, not a figure Volare has published.
The number is useful because the sector has mostly failed without disclosing it. The Insect Institute’s tally of five collapsed insect-farming companies adds up to about $777 million of funding and gives a plant cost for none of them. Volare gives one. What it does not give is revenue, a price, or how full the plant is. This piece sets out what the announcement lets an operator or investor calculate, and where the public numbers stop agreeing with each other.
What was announced
All four of the 26 October 2026 reports agree on the core facts: €7.1 million of new funding raised through the Springvest crowdfunding platform, a completed plant, and a second plant in preparation. They differ on detail, which matters later.
| Item | Reported figure | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Plant | Volare 01, Pori, Finland; 10,000 m²; former newspaper printing facility | AgFunderNews, FoodBev, Tech Funding News |
| Protein capacity | Up to 5,000 t/year | All four |
| Oil capacity | Up to 2,000 t/year | AgFunderNews, BeBeez, FoodBev |
| Capex | €15m ($16.6m), on schedule and on budget | AgFunderNews, BeBeez, FoodBev, Tech Funding News |
| Staffing | Four people per shift | AgFunderNews, FoodBev |
| New raise | €7.1m via Springvest, with new and existing investors including Maki.vc | All four |
| Scale-up from demo | About 1,000x (BeBeez, FoodBev) | BeBeez, FoodBev |
| Revenue | Not disclosed | BeBeez, Tech Funding News |
| Product prices | Not disclosed by the company | AgFunderNews |
Feedstock is food-industry side streams, such as inedible parts of grains, fed to black soldier fly larvae. The company has sold protein commercially from a smaller demonstration site since 2022, per AgFunderNews and BeBeez, so this is a scale-up of a product with a sales history rather than a first-of-a-kind process.
The capex arithmetic
The calculation is simple and the caveats are the point.
- Per tonne of protein capacity: €15m ÷ 5,000 t = about €3,000 per annual tonne.
- Per tonne of combined protein and oil capacity: €15m ÷ 7,000 t = about €2,140 per annual tonne. Oil is a co-product, so this treats the plant as one line.
- Capacity is a design figure. Both AgFunderNews and Tech Funding News describe the plant as in commissioning and ramp-up. Tech Funding News reports that ramp-up is expected to be completed by the end of 2026 and that 2027 is the first full year of sales for Volare 01. Output in tonnes shipped is therefore not yet established.
- Capex is the company’s budget statement. The €15m has not been shown to us as an audited construction cost, and we have not seen what it includes (land or building purchase, working capital, commissioning).
Volare also claims its capex is four to ten times lower than other insect producers’ (BeBeez, FoodBev, Tech Funding News, all describing it as the company’s claim). We cannot test that against peers: the Insect Institute’s table lists planned capacity for only one of the five failed companies (Enorm, about 11,000 tonnes of protein meal) and no plant cost for any. For orientation only, Enorm’s roughly $57 million of total funding over a planned 11,000 tonnes is about $5,200 per planned tonne. That is funding raised, not capex, and is not comparable to the Volare figure. It shows only why a disclosed capex per tonne is rare.
Practical consequence: if you benchmark an insect or fermentation project, ask for capex per tonne of nameplate capacity and the date at which nameplate was reached. Volare has supplied the first and cannot yet supply the second.
Where the money figures do not reconcile
Three sets of numbers sit next to each other and do not fit cleanly.
The €26m package versus the €15m plant. In May 2025 The Fish Site reported a €26 million package to build the first industrial-scale facility, made up of equity, mezzanine and senior loans, and public support, with Maki.vc, Firstminute Capital, Springvest, the Finnish Climate Fund, Finnvera and Norion Bank named. The plant came in at €15m. The reports we read do not say what the remaining roughly €11m was for, how much of the €26m has been drawn, or how it splits between equity and debt. It may cover working capital, technology development or the second plant. We do not know.
The €7.1m raise. Tech Funding News gives a share price of €2.80 and a fully diluted valuation of about €63.8m pre-money and €74.4m post-money. The gap between those, €10.6m, is larger than the €7.1m raised. The article notes that it does not explain the difference and mentions an option programme for Springvest. It is a secondary report of the valuation, and we have not seen the offering document. The raise equals about 47% of the plant’s capex (€7.1m ÷ €15m), but whether it funds the second plant, working capital or both is not specified: BeBeez says it will contribute to the second plant, while the other reports are less specific.
The second plant. The reports disagree on what is known. AgFunderNews says no capacity, capex or timing is given. BeBeez says the second plant would have roughly five times the protein capacity of Volare 01 (so about 25,000 tonnes if the figure holds, which is our multiplication). Tech Funding News adds that construction is expected to start in 2027 and that the site is likely outside Finland, near side-stream partners. A 5x plant at the same capex intensity would imply a budget in the region of €75m, but Volare has given no capex for it and the intensity may not scale linearly, so we treat that as arithmetic, not a forecast.
Offtake: named, but not sized
AgFunderNews reports offtake agreements with Skretting (aquafeed) and an unnamed global chemical company, plus commercial customers Alvar Pet (dog treats), VAFO Group’s brand Dagsmark (cat food) and a trout feed collaboration with Alltech Fennoaqua, and says a significant share of production capacity has already been sold. BeBeez lists the same customers. FoodBev, by contrast, says no customers are named and mentions only sectors. The Fish Site’s 2025 report described the Skretting offtake and a 150,000 kg Alltech Fennoaqua trial.
What none of them gives is a contracted volume, a price, or a term. “A significant share” could be 20% or 80% of 5,000 tonnes. Without a volume, an offtake is a signal of interest, not a revenue base. Our own look at alternative protein offtake agreements found the same pattern across the sector: named counterparties, unsized commitments.
The price problem
Tech Funding News cites market prices, attributed to an estimate by ONEI: insect meal at $3,800–6,000 per tonne, fishmeal at $1,815 and soy at $541. It also reports Volare’s target of a production cost of about €1,000 per tonne at scale.
Those figures, taken together, define the commercial question. Insect meal sells at roughly two to three times the fishmeal price on the cited range. Volare is aiming at a unit cost that is below fishmeal’s price but a long way above soy’s. In aquafeed and poultry feed, where the buyer compares against fishmeal and soy, a premium has to be justified by function. Volare points to protein digestibility above 90% (BeBeez, FoodBev, Tech Funding News), a company claim we have no independent test of. In pet food, the customer base it names, a premium is easier to sustain: AgFunderNews quotes the CEO saying European pet food producers want high-quality ingredients and security of supply.
Two caveats. The cost target is in euros and the market prices in dollars, so they are not strictly comparable without an exchange rate, and the €1,000 is a target rather than a reported cost. And the price range is an estimate cited second-hand.
Practical consequence: for an ingredient buyer, the question to put to Volare is which tonnes are contracted at what price, in which end market. If the book skews to pet food, the plant does not depend on beating fishmeal.
The counter-argument
The strongest case for Volare is that it differs from the companies that failed. Ÿnsect raised more than $500 million according to Petfood Industry, and was placed in judicial liquidation in December 2025 after the court said it had not raised the funds needed for its continuation plan. The Insect Institute attributes its failure to high energy costs, persistent technical problems at its main factory and uncompetitive pricing, and says AgroLoop’s construction consumed its funds before commercial-scale production. Volare’s design choices read as a response to those causes: a converted building, a fully electric plant (BeBeez, FoodBev), a claimed 30% energy saving in end-product processing and about 50% less energy in frass hygienisation (AgFunderNews), and four people per shift. It also runs on a smaller capital base than Ÿnsect’s. The decentralised alternative has not worked either, as we covered when FarmInsect was wound down.
The case against is that the claims are all the company’s own, none has been demonstrated at industrial output, and the plant has not yet had a full year of sales. A converted building and low staffing reduce capex and labour; they do not by themselves solve feedstock, energy price, yield or selling price, which were the failure points elsewhere. AgFunderNews also notes that EU rules prevent insect farms using post-consumer food waste and most animal by-products as feed; the CEO says the rules could loosen but the model does not depend on it. That keeps feedstock cheap and clean but narrow.
What we could not establish
- How much of the 5,000 tonnes is contracted, at what price and on what term. Only “a significant share” is disclosed.
- Actual output, yield and utilisation. The plant is in ramp-up, with completion expected by the end of 2026 per Tech Funding News.
- Revenue. Not disclosed in any report we read.
- What the €26m package’s remaining roughly €11m funds, and the equity-debt split.
- Why the pre- and post-money valuations differ by more than the amount raised.
- The second plant’s capacity, capex, location and date. Reports differ; BeBeez’s 5x figure is not corroborated by AgFunderNews, which says none is given.
- What the €15m includes, and whether the four-to-ten-times-lower capex claim holds against named peers.
- The identity of the unnamed chemical-company offtaker.
- The opening date. AgFunderNews says the facility is complete but gives no opening date.
- The ONEI price estimates, which we saw only as cited by Tech Funding News.
What to watch
- Volare’s first full year of sales (2027 per Tech Funding News): does reported output approach 5,000 tonnes, and at what realised price against the €1,000 cost target?
- A capex figure for the second plant. If the 5x capacity arrives at a budget well under €75m, the capital-intensity claim gets support; if it arrives above, the €3,000 per tonne does not scale.
- The use of the €26m package in Volare’s next financial disclosure.
- A named, sized offtake from Skretting or the chemical company.