Global player with high ambition

"Since early childhood, having a dog of my own was my biggest dream," recounts Birgitta Ornau, founder, partner and managing director of Terra Canis, fondly in an interview. The male mongrel that she eventually got from a Spanish pet refuge, however, was a constant source of worry from the outset: he was very poorly, refused to eat and was unable to keep down the little that he consumed. As a consequence, Birgitta Ornau became a pioneer.
Since Terra Canis was established 16 years ago, its creative ideas and innovative products have turned it into a big player in the German pet food business. Birgitta Ornau's plan was to revolutionise the pet food market with products based on raw materials of 100 per cent food-grade quality. All ingredients were to be free of animal and bone meal, inferior animal and vegetable by-products, abattoir waste, binding agents, preservatives, sugar and flavour and aroma enhancers.
This was scarcely imaginable at the start of 2004. No bank or butchery wanted to come on board. Birgitta Ornau's concept and her ambition have taught all the sceptics a lesson, however. Terra Canis now claims to belong to the top three premium dog foods and describes itself as a market leader and pioneer in the field of dog food containing food-safe ingredients.

With its varied recipes, the nutritional principle of Terra Canis developed by Birgitta Ornau is based on the evolution of simple laws of nature. As descendants originally of the wolf, dogs are carnivores and omnivores. Apart from meat, innards and bones, however, the wolf instinctively subsists on fallen fruit, berries, grasses and roots (partly via the stomach contents of its prey). The healthy, nutrient-rich list of ingredients derived from this forms the model for the entire product range of Terra Canis.
Unlike conventional moist food for dogs, the ingredients are of 100 per cent food quality and are thus extremely appetising and tasty. The responsibility for this has lain for the last 14 years with the traditional Schäbitz butchery, a family butcher in the heart of Munich. Rapid growth, however, necessitated a rethink by Terra Canis, and in 2017 it embarked on the construction of a new production plant in Petershausen. The ultra-modern plant close to Munich is now fully operational, with a focus not only on the products, but on sustainability. Intelligent heat recovery enables Terra Canis to operate an energy-saving production process. On the roof of the new plant, as part of a…