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Damian Józefiak

Co-founding Central Europe's largest insect protein plant and pioneering industrial-scale black soldier fly farming in Poland

HiProMine S.A. LinkedIn

How a Polish professor built Central Europe's largest insect protein plant by treating insects as biological processing machines that convert agricultural waste into sustainable feed.

Most agri-biotech founders pick a lane. Either you publish papers or you build a factory. Damian Józefiak, a Professor at Poznań University of Life Sciences, did both, and used each side to reinforce the other. His working idea is simple. Insects are biological processing machines. Design a factory around that single premise and you can turn agricultural by-products into protein, fat, and fertilizer with almost nothing left over.

How he innovates

Józefiak engineers the biology itself. He co-founded HiProMine in 2015 as a university spin-off, then developed BIOINSEC, a proprietary three-module bioreactor. It runs microbial fermentation of plant substrates, controls larva biomass growth with metabolic water recovery, and handles automated fractionation as one continuous pipeline. The circular economy model was built into the technology from the start. Nobody bolted it on later as a marketing claim.

A few practices define how that works on the floor:

  • Three insect species in parallel. Black soldier fly, mealworm, and superworm mature on different clocks of 2 to 8 weeks. Running all three buys biological flexibility a single-species farm does not have.
  • Peer-reviewed standards in production. Because Józefiak publishes as an academic scientist, production has to be measurable and reproducible. That discipline carries from the lab bench to the factory line.
  • Staged capital. An EU ERDF grant of approximately PLN 4.55 million funded the BIOINSEC prototype. A private placement of PLN 20 million followed. Then came the NewConnect IPO in July 2022, and a pan-European distribution deal with Brenntag Specialties in February 2025.
  • Certification ahead of commercial demand. HiProMine obtained GMP+ Feed Safety certification shortly after the Karkoszów plant began production. Feed industry buyers got compliance proof before they had to ask for it.

What guides him

Józefiak believes sustainability in protein production has to be proven at industrial scale. A paper is not enough. When describing the EU grant that funded the BIOINSEC prototype, he put it plainly: “The grant has allowed us to put in place technological solutions which require scientific work and prototyping.” That framing runs through how HiProMine was built. Researchers need real infrastructure before their science becomes a product.

European regulation, for him, is a route to plan around rather than an obstacle to fight. The Karkoszów facility opened within roughly 10 months of construction starting, and it sits about 100 km from Berlin, well inside Central European feed distribution networks. The Brenntag partnership, announced February 18, 2025, he described as “a milestone in promoting sustainable solutions in the Animal Nutrition industry.”

What makes him effective

He kept his academic appointment while running the company. As Head of Department at Poznań University of Life Sciences, with roughly 172 publications and approximately 5,500 citations, Józefiak has the kind of scientific credibility that is also a commercial moat. EU grant applications get stronger. Distribution partners trust the product science. R&D hiring gets easier. The Brenntag deal, which required the insect protein to hold up under scrutiny from a global chemicals distributor, partly traces back to that credibility.

What you can borrow

  • Use public R&D grants to absorb prototype risk. EU structural funds exist to de-risk technology that private investors are not yet willing to fund. Winning a grant before you go to investors separates the science question from the commercial question.
  • Build the circular model into the product architecture. HiProMine’s waste-in, protein-out system is the supply chain, not a sustainability overlay. When the circular logic is structural rather than cosmetic, it survives scrutiny.
  • Stage certification around production milestones. Quality certifications obtained at or before commercial launch show distribution partners that the manufacturing is ready rather than aspirational.
  • Preserve your research identity. In regulated industries with long procurement cycles, peer-reviewed publications and citations give a founder a kind of credibility that is genuinely hard to replicate.

Incidental facts

  • Co-founded HiProMine S.A. on March 30, 2015, as a spin-off from Poznań University of Life Sciences, together with four co-founders.
  • HiProMine debuted on the NewConnect exchange (Warsaw Stock Exchange alternative market) on July 14, 2022, ticker HPM, at a valuation of PLN 117.45 million.
  • The Karkoszów production facility (Lubuskie Voivodeship, approximately 100 km from Berlin) opened June 2024. Investment approximately €52 to €57 million. Designed capacity 30,000 tonnes of BSF larvae per year plus 30,000 tonnes of insect frass.
  • Approximately 172 publications and 5,500 citations according to research database summaries (ResearchGate and research.com).
  • Delivered a TEDx Poznań talk titled “Edible or inedible? About the perception of food” (approximately 2017).

Last updated June 15, 2026 · Curated by the innovationterms editorial team