Proteine Resources' EIC Accelerator Funding for Mealworm Pet Food

Europe's mushroom farms produce a waste stream that costs them money: the stems and spent mycelium left after harvest, which growers can spend up to €80,000 a year to dispose of, according to Tech.eu and Impact Investor. Proteine Resources, a company registered in Masłomiąca just outside Kraków, feeds that material to buffalo mealworms and sells the insect protein to pet food makers, pitching it as a replacement for beef.

The EIC Accelerator selected its project, PROTEINBOOST, at the March 2025 cut-off for blended finance. CORDIS records a grant agreement signed on 30 September 2025, running from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2027, with an EU contribution of €2,499,438.47. The company announced the award in July 2025 as €9.5 million of blended financing. The money is meant to turn what the project calls a "prototype low-capacity working station" into a "first-in-the-world pilot autonomous insect farm module". With a year of the grant left, that module has not been reported as built.

Mealworms on a mushroom diet

The insect is the buffalo mealworm, per the company's site and Pet Business World, which reported that the larvae are selectively bred to eat mushroom mycelium. In a September 2025 interview with GlobalPETS, co-CEO Bartłomiej Roszkowski set it against the black soldier fly, saying his larvae carry more protein and less fat. The company's own site says its larvae mature in three to four weeks against an industry standard of seven to eight, on a patented mushroom-based diet, and describes a remotely managed facility that needs no more than five staff on site.

The feedstock is the core of the pitch. The CORDIS objective describes an "efficient method to handle yet unprocessed agricultural byproducts", a side-stream available all year, and says the larvae deliver "protein exceeding 80% of the defatted content" that "can be used 1:1 to replace beef in pet food products". The same objective says the company tested the larvae's excrement, frass, as a fertiliser that could go back to the side-stream suppliers, and uses multispectral analysis to monitor rearing. Roszkowski told GlobalPETS the frass was being trialled as a peat replacement for mushroom farms.

The protein numbers the company publishes are not stated on one basis, which makes them hard to compare. Its product page sells EntoPro Flakes 67, with 67% crude protein, and EntoPro Smoothie 17, a frozen binder with 17%. Roszkowski gave GlobalPETS a figure of up to 70% in dry mass. CORDIS gives more than 80% of defatted content. No independent analysis of the ingredient could be found.

Cheaper than beef, by how much

The cost claim varies with the source. Pet Business World reported in March 2025 that the company put its production cost at €0.80 per kilogram, against an EU average of €2.36 for beef. Roszkowski told GlobalPETS in September 2025 that the product was 20 to 30% cheaper than beef. The company's product page says "up to 25% cheaper than beef". The first figure compares production costs, the others prices; none comes with published workings. The same Pet Business World article reported that the company had EU veterinary clearance, and GlobalPETS reported veterinary and HACCP approvals; no registration document for either could be found.

A €9.5 million headline and a €2.5 million grant

Before the EIC, the company's disclosed venture money was small. A company release of 9 October 2024 announced €1.36 million from SMOK Ventures and Bitspiration Booster, bringing its total funding to €1.8 million; Vestbee rounds the same round to €1.4 million. Both investors appear as shareholders in the court register extract.

In July 2025 the company announced €9.5 million of blended EIC Accelerator financing, reported by Tech.eu, Pet Business World and Poland Insight, none of which gives the split between grant and equity. CORDIS records the grant at €2,499,438.47. Blended finance pairs a grant with an equity investment; the company has not published the size or terms of any EIC equity component, and no EIC Fund announcement naming the company could be found in a web search.

In November 2025 Radix Ventures joined with an undisclosed investment. Feed & Additive and Pet Worldwide reported that the round brought the company's 2025 capital to nearly €12 million; in May 2026 the company put it at €11.8 million, per Protein Production Technology. Those totals include the EIC money.

The factory, not yet reported built

What the money is for has been stated consistently. The company told the press it would expand its pilot site tenfold to 100 tonnes a year and build what it calls "the world's first fully autonomous" insect protein factory. Feed & Additive and Pet Worldwide place the pilot facility in the Mazowieckie region; Poland Insight places the planned plant near Siedlce but names a different region, Podlaskie. In March 2025 the company told Pet Business World it aimed for a fully scalable factory by the end of 2026 and that this needed further fundraising. Roszkowski told GlobalPETS that first commercial-ready protein batches were expected by the end of 2026.

A search of trade press and the company's site on 28 October 2026 found no report that the expanded pilot site or the autonomous module is operating. CORDIS shows no periodic report yet, which is normal one year into a two-year project.

A pet food launched, customers unnamed

The commercial step that can be checked is VELI. At Interzoo 2026 in Nuremberg, the trade fair held from 12 to 15 May, the company launched VELI, a functional wet pet food range built on EntoPro, according to Protein Production Technology. The company describes EntoPro there as a hybrid of insect protein and bioactive compounds from mushroom by-products, combined in VELI with chitin fibre as a prebiotic and with added postbiotics. It said in vitro studies with the University of Agriculture in Kraków had shown "exceptional functional properties", that formal in vivo testing had begun, and that certification for the US and Canadian markets was planned for later in 2026. In November 2025 it had said the first private-label products would launch in the first quarter of 2026, per Feed & Additive; the launch came in May.

Customers remain unnamed. The October 2024 release said 80% of production capacity was reserved for customers through pre-orders. Pet Business World reported supply contracts with customers in the Netherlands in March 2025, and Roszkowski told GlobalPETS in September 2025 that the company was working with ten customers on final formulations. The company says more than 80% of dogs and cats chose food containing EntoPro in its own tests, per Pet Worldwide; no study has been published.

The revenue ambitions also come in two versions. The 2024 release set a target of €62 million in annual revenue by 2030, with first revenues in 2026. Super Biznes, citing a 2024 Forbes report, gave a target of around PLN 270 million a year. The register extract shows that accounts were filed for every year from 2017 to 2025, the latest on 8 July 2026, but the figures in them were not reviewed for this article.

1. Insect protein from farm by-productsExistsEntoPro Flakes and Smoothie on sale to manufacturers, per the product page.
2. 1:1 beef replacement in pet foodClaim, product launchedVELI shown at Interzoo in May 2026; no published independent nutritional or feeding study.
3. Pilot autonomous insect farm moduleNot yet reportedPlanned expansion to 100 tonnes a year; no report of it operating by 28 October 2026.
4. Frass as fertiliser for suppliersIn trialsTested, per CORDIS; a turf fertiliser project with Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences began in July 2026, per the company.

The fertiliser line has its own funding. The company's EU funding page lists InsectLoop Turf, an organic-mineral fertiliser with oligochitin for professional sports turf, led by Proteine Resources with Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, with a total cost of PLN 5,098,330.54, an EU contribution of PLN 3,896,143.40 and a run from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2028. The same page lists PLN 107,000 of EU funds for preparing the EIC Accelerator application. A CORDIS search for the company name on 28 October 2026 returned no EU research project other than PROTEINBOOST.

Europe's protein gap

The project frames itself as an answer to Europe's protein deficit, and the deficit is documented. A European Parliament research briefing of July 2023 says the EU livestock sector is "critically dependent on imports of plant-based proteins for animal feed", mainly soybeans from Argentina, Brazil and the United States, and lists microbial, insect and seaweed proteins among the ways to diversify supply. The CORDIS objective makes the same argument for its own case: local protein production to reduce dependence on imports, under the Green Deal. The company sells its protein into pet food, while the dependence the briefing describes is in feed for livestock.

Proteine Resources was not asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.