About us
Solar Foods is a Finnish food technology company on a mission to revolutionise global food production.
The way humanity is feeding itself is wrecking the climate, the soil, and the biodiversity of the planet and is putting billions at risk.
Global leader in sustainable protein production, Solar Foods solves the global food production problem by offering a completely new alternative to existing animal and plant proteins.
Revolutionising the global food system
Solar Foods exists to fundamentally change how the world produces protein. Our protein ingredient Solein is an invitation to the food brands and innovators who believe the future of food should take less from the world, not more.
We are commercialising Solein in the United States, focusing first on the Health & Performance nutrition market, where Solein excels as an ingredient. Before the United States, Solein-powered products have already been available for consumers in Singapore. We are expecting to receive the novel food regulatory approval in the EU during 2026.
At the same time, we are scaling our Solein production capacity. Our first commercial-scale production facility, Factory 01, started operations in Vantaa, Finland in 2024. We are already planning our second production facility, Factory 02, which will scale our production capacity 40-fold compared to Factory 01. Factory 02 will be built to Lappeenranta, Finland, and we expect to make the final investment decision for Factory 02 during 2026.
This is just the beginning – we are also planning a network of Solein factories all over the world.
The future of food production
Global food demand continues to rise, while land, water, and climate stability grow increasingly constrained. As traditional agriculture is reaching its limits, it is clear that incremental improvements to traditional food production methods help, but they do not scale fast enough, nor reduce resource use enough, to meet future demand. The global food challenge and feeding billions requires fundamentally different ways of producing food.
Ingredients like Solein offer a viable solution for the pressing issue. Produced independently of land use, weather, and climate conditions, Solein requires only a fraction of the resources used in conventional protein production.
Gas fermentation technology changes the whole food production infrastructure: When food ingredients are produced in factories instead of fields and farms, food production behaves much more like energy or water infrastructure with continuous operation, predictable outputs, long asset lifetimes, and low marginal costs while built – offering the food industry an easily scalable, stable source of protein with steady quality and no price fluctuations.
We can continue enjoying the foods we love while significantly reducing environmental impact and protecting biodiversity – without compromising on taste, nutrition, or the familiar experience.
Creating a new ecosystem to the food industry
We are not revolutionising the global food system alone. Our gas fermentation technology platform enables creating a completely new ecosystem in the food industry, and we work together with numerous partners, all the way from raw material production to the technology platform and the commercialisation of Solein.
Founded in science, built on a natural discovery
Our unique approach comes from a union of scientific fields: renewable energy and bioprocess engineering.
Solar Foods was born from a scientific research programme at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Lappeenranta University of Technology. The research team discovered a way to turn emission-free electricity and captured CO2 into edible calories. In other words, growing food out of thin air.
Dr Pasi Vainikka and Dr Juha-Pekka Pitkänen decided the research had so much potential it should be taken commercial. Solar Foods was founded in 2017 with this goal in mind; operations started in 2018.
Solar Foods has passed major milestones, building and commercialising the technological platform over the years. Solein®, the company’s first novel food product, was granted a novel food regulatory approval in 2022 in Singapore and the company obtained the self-affirmed GRAS status for Solein in the United States in 2024. Solar Foods first large-scale production facility for Solein, Factory 01, began operation in spring 2024, and the company is currently engineering its next production facility, Factory 02, which is aimed to begin operations in 2028.
Solar Foods as an investment
Founded in Finland in 2017, Solar Foods is listed on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market Finland. Since then, Solein has become available in Singapore and the United States, and we are expecting the novel food regulatory approval in the EU during 2026.
Our headquarters and first commercial-scale production facility, Factory 01, are located in Vantaa, Finland.
