Quality pays

The days when dogs and cats were fed on scraps from the table of their owner are long since gone in many regions of the world. It seems that the juggernaut of industrially produced pet food is unstoppable, and the variety of products on offer is limitless. Virtually all the trends seen in human nutrition have been taken up and marketed successfully by the pet sector in the last few years.
At the same time, research into the needs of animals and their satisfaction has steadily expanded. Globally active companies like Kemin and Diana Pet Food, for example, are now able to pick up on the widely varying requirements of consumers and develop made-to-measure solutions for the pet food industry. This is coming under increasing pressure in view of the growing competition across the industry. There is pressure on one hand to bring a steady stream of innovations onto the market, coupled with rising pressure on margins as a consequence of falling consumer prices. Commercial brands that continue to be in strong demand are responsible for this. On the other hand, as the example of dog treats shows, cheap imports from the Far East are also putting pressure on the general price level.

There is a strong temptation for the pet food industry to react to falling margins by reducing its own quality standards. Put plainly, this means using cheaper raw ingredients for its own products to be able to match the prices in the market. It is good that most of the leading companies are resisting this temptation, and on the contrary are even trying to raise the quality of their products. They are succeeding in this by opting increasingly for home-grown raw ingredient sources, which are always accessible and also offer a high degree of reliability.
Concentrating more closely on quality pays off for a company in the end. Since the statutory regulations for pet products are being tightened up all the time, it is getting harder for inferior products to become established. But the crucial factor is consumer behaviour, which has changed considerably in the last few years. In the leading industrialised countries in particular, customers are now more critical and much more informed than ever thanks to the Internet. The declarations on pet food products are read with a more critical eye and sales…