Pets on the Bosporus

The favourable development of the pet product sector in Turkey could be interpreted as a sign that conditions are improving for the Turks and confidence is growing. Companies are investing again and looking to international markets, as confirmed by the increased presence of Turkish firms at Interzoo. In 2012 there were just seven companies, in 2016 around 20 companies and in 2018 a total of 29, many of them with several Turkish brands under one roof. Various experts on the pet sector in Turkey point to 2012 as the year in which Turkish companies broke through onto the international pet supplies market, a trend that has continued up to the present.

The overall size of the Turkish pet market is currently estimated at total sales of approx. 865 mio euros, although this is against the background of a market that is growing at an incredible rate of around 15 per cent per year. Growth amounted to 56.8 per cent for the five-year period between 2011 and 2016 alone.
Roughly 14 mio out of 23 mio households own one or more pets. Most of them are located in the big cities like Istanbul, Izmir or also Ankara, where the current situation in the pet sector is most comparable with that of countries in Western Europe. The picture is completely different in large parts of the Anatolian region, however, where pet owning is still in its infancy.
Looking at the distribution of pets in detail, Western Europeans would be surprised to learn that cage birds constitute the largest segment in Turkish pet-owning at 29 per cent, followed by cats (28 per cent) and dogs (24 per cent). Aquariums come next with 18 per cent, while reptiles and small animals play virtually no part, although this may change, especially with regard to small animals.
There are no population figures available for cage birds, but more detailed data can be found for four-legged friends. It is reported that 3.26 mio cats are kept as pets in Turkey, generating sales of food products worth 44.05 mio euros, as compared to 1.11 mio dogs yielding annual food sales of 40.5 mio euros. These figures were published in the Foreign Trade Consulting Report by Kececi Consulting.

What was striking at Interzoo 2018 was the high number of Turkish companies that deal in litter products. Take the example of Cilesiz from Atakum, a coastal town on the Black Sea and district in the province of Samsun. Company head Soner Cilesiz says that there are many mines in this region in which white…