The Catalan company that turns fly larvae into animal feed and wants to feed humans

BarcelonaThere are factories for everything, and the Dapibus plant is an example of this. No one would imagine that a fly larva could be used to feed pigs and chickens, even pets, but this is the "most sustainable and local" commercial proposal of this biotechnology company based in Abrera.

It all started in 2021 at a talk attended by Àlex Segura, co-founder and CEO of the company. It was there that he heard about larvae as an alternative protein source. "We haven't invented anything new, but four years ago there were only a few companies in all of Europe that were starting to produce it. In Spain, there were none," he explains in theCompaniesProtix (Netherlands), Innovafeed, and Agronutris (France) are some of these competitors. As a graduate in Business Administration from the International University of Catalonia (UIC) and with work experience in the fashion industry, he wasn't an expert on the subject, but he was curious and began reading about it.

Little by little, he began to articulate his business idea. He joined forces with other entrepreneurs to make it also meaningful on a productive and financial level, and he brought Carlos Conde and Arturo Almazor onto the team as co-founders. Dapibus's origins lie in the fruit and vegetable scraps generated by the agri-food industry, such as orange peel and pulp, which are left over from juice-making companies. This is the food that fly larvae, the youngest ones, eat until they grow fat enough. The Catalan company uses black soldier flies or hermeticism ilucens because they are "very efficient," capable of transforming low-quality foods into proteins. In fact, Dapibus translates as protein In Greek.

You shouldn't imagine a factory with insects flying around a large hall, but rather a climate-controlled room with many trays where the larvae and ground food are mixed.

After conducting small laboratory tests, this entire process is now being carried out industrially in a factory in Abrera, in the same industrial park where Seat is located. With a surface area of 3,000 square meters, the Dapibus farm opened its doors at the end of last year and has been testing all the machines needed to execute the different phases over the past few months, with the goal of achieving highly automated manufacturing.

In recent weeks, production has begun with one shift and will expand to full capacity by 2026, reaching five shifts—24 hours a day, 7 days a week—and a workforce of around twenty workers. Dapibus estimates put the maximum annual production capacity at around 3,500 tons, using 17,000 tons of waste. In the future, they plan to reserve a small portion of the larvae for breeding and thus stop purchasing them from an external supplier, as they do now. Each larva can lay up to 500 eggs.

Since Dapibus's founding, the company has raised €10 million. It closed a €4 million financing round in 2023, with the participation of local industrial partners. The remaining budget is divided between €4 million from a European grant and €2 million in debt. The Abrera factory has received the bulk of the funds raised, with an investment of eight million euros. With the production center operational, Dapibus will begin sales, with an expected turnover of between 1.5 and 2 million euros in 2025. It expects to turn a profit in 2026, when revenue is estimated to rise to four million euros.

The future: human consumption

The pig and poultry sectors, with a significant presence in Catalonia, are Dapibus's main target customers, without overlooking the entire pet industry. "They're a huge market," Segura emphasizes. Dapibus has already considered FairflySegura's response is that regulatory approval for this is "close." "We'll be there, and we'll see how it's received," the entrepreneur emphasizes.