Polyfly wins first prize at the Innovation Hub Awards at Fruit Attraction 2026
Polyfly has won first prize in the F&V Industry category of the Fruit Attraction 2026 Innovation Hub Awards for the project Polyfly: Pollinating Hoverflies. The awards were presented on 8 October, the final day of the show, after the nine finalists had pitched their projects to the jury.
These awards recognise the most innovative proposals in the fruit and vegetable sector. For us, this prize recognises the work of recent years and confirms that hoverflies are becoming established as a real pollination solution for growers.
A new kind of managed pollinator
Pollination is a key factor in agricultural production: around 75% of the world’s food crops benefit from animal pollination, which has a direct impact on the yield and quality of fruit and seed.
Growers have used bees and bumblebees in greenhouses since the 1980s. Hoverflies were first proposed for crop pollination in the 1970s, but until now nobody had managed to rear them at commercial scale.
Our hoverflies are not intended to replace bees: they are a complementary solution for crops where existing pollinators do not meet all needs, and they can be used both in commercial crop production and in seed multiplication. They do not sting, which makes them easy to manage in enclosed spaces, and they can work in low light or under artificial lighting. We offer two species:
- QUEENFLY® (Eristalis tenax): suited to cooler temperatures (10–30 °C), low light, netted crops and early-season conditions.
- GOLDFLY® (Eristalinus aeneus): for warmer conditions (16–36 °C) and densely flowering crops.
The species, the density and the number of releases are defined according to the needs of each crop, so our commercial and technical team studies each project to integrate hoverflies into its pollination strategy.
From pilot plant to industrial scale
Before moving to industrial scale, we operated an 800 m² pilot plant for more than five years. Today, our facility in Huércal-Overa (Almería), the first dedicated specifically to the mass rearing of pollinating hoverflies, has a potential capacity of more than one billion hoverflies a year and is currently scaling up production.
We already sell on four continents, with more sales abroad than in Spain. The Almería plant is the first node of an international network that we will build through our own facilities or licensing agreements with local partners. This growth is backed by the European Innovation Council’s EIC Accelerator, which we won in 2023, a Series A round in 2024, and earlier support from Spain’s CDTI and ENISA.
Our first Fruit Attraction
Fruit Attraction 2026 was Polyfly’s first time at the show. Over three days, we talked with growers, technicians, cooperatives and distributors from many countries about how to bring hoverflies into their pollination strategy.
This first prize raises our profile in the sector and will help us keep reaching new growers and markets.
Thank you to the jury, to the Fruit Attraction organisers and to everyone who stopped by to learn more about our work.