Circa Biotech: One Waste Stream, Four Products, a Future 100 Spot
The Abu Dhabi climate-tech firm turns organic waste into feed, aviation fuel feedstock, fertilizer and carbon credits from one zero-cost input.
Karim El-Sayed Karim El-Sayed covers company news, policy and regulation across the UAE and wider MENA for Anecdoted, with a focus on how new rules and licences reshape how startups operate. karim@anecdoted.com
Circa Biotech was selected for the UAE Future 100 in 2025. The Abu Dhabi climate-tech company, founded in 2020, runs black soldier fly bioconversion on a single zero-cost feedstock stream and turns that input into several products at once.
Its semi-automated facility in Al Ain takes in organic and food waste. Out comes insect protein for animal and aquaculture feed. Insect oil leaves the plant as a feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel and as an input for cosmetics. The same process yields organic fertilizer and carbon credits.
That one-process, multi-output design is the commercial argument. A single waste stream feeds every product line, so costs sit structurally low. The company also points to a path for certified, capital-light platform revenue, which means growth that leans on licensing rather than on pouring concrete for new plants.
Circa Biotech is the UAE's first licensed industrial insect-farming operation, and it has filed a US patent. It holds the Abu Dhabi Chamber Sustainability Label.
Dr. Haythem Riahi, founder and CEO, started the company with co-founder and COO Dr. Liudmila Prozorova. One of the two is recognised as an ICAO Alternative Fuels Expert, a credential that lines up with the aviation side of the business.
That aviation side is no longer theoretical. The company has paid sustainable aviation fuel feedstock pilots with ADNOC. In 2025 it also won the global ClimateTech World Cup.
The insect oil output is worth watching on its own. A single stream feeds two very different markets: aviation, where buyers scrutinise certification and traceability, and cosmetics, where buyers care about purity and formulation. Serving both from one process is a cost advantage, but it also means two sets of compliance requirements running through the same Al Ain facility.
What makes the company interesting is the overlap it creates. Food security, waste diversion and aviation decarbonisation usually sit in different portfolios, with different budgets and different timelines. Circa Biotech's circular system addresses all three from the same site, using a feedstock that costs nothing because it is the waste stream municipalities already pay to handle. The aviation piece is the sharpest edge, since a domestic source of fuel feedstock shifts who holds leverage over that supply.
Scale is the open question. It turns on how much waste the company can secure and how quickly it licenses its process rather than building it. Circa Biotech's own framing puts food security, waste diversion and aviation decarbonisation inside one circular system, and that is the claim it now has to prove outside the pilot stage.
