More fish canning companies in Thailand are increasingly betting their future on producing pet food, a direction made clear by the successes of the first-movers among them and the pet food market's impressive resilience during pandemic lockdowns.
This October alone, three well-established canned seafood manufacturers announced their plans to fill more pet food bowls than dinner plates next year. They are Sea Value PLC, Asian Alliance International (AAI) and Pataya Food Group (PFG).
Sea Value, one of the world's leading manufacturers of canned tuna and Thailand's No. 2 canned tuna producer, said it will start focusing more on its pet food businesses, which currently account for 40% of their operations. Canned fish such as tuna, mackerel and sardines for human consumption represents 60% of the company's business.
Sea Value, which made 30 billion Thailand Baht in sales revenues last year, plans to invest over 1 billion baht ($1 = THB 38+) over the next five years to supercharge its pet food production. The company produces several premium brands of wet pet food in different packaging media.
Asian Alliance International (AAI) has gone ahead to list its common shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) starting in November in order to fund its additional investments in pet food manufacturing. With total paid up capital of 1.7 billion baht, AAI is offering 637.5 million shares from its 1.7 billion total ordinary shares in an initial public offering (IPO) for 5.55 baht each.
The company hopes the IPO proceeds will provide it with 2.2 billion baht it needs to boost its pet food manufacturing capacity by 40,000 tons in the next three years, which will almost double its current pet food operations at 42,000 tons per year.
AAI is known in the industry for its ready-to-eat fish products for human consumption and a wide-range of dry and wet pet food (Monchou and Maria brands) for dogs and cats.
Also vying for more pet food market share is PFG which announced a new pet food brand, possibly for dogs, next year. PFG is the maker of various shelf stable fish products under the Nautilus brand that is popular in Thailand and France. Its pet food line is about 40% of the company, with Regalos as the flagship brand of cat food. PFG also has an OEM pet food operations. PFG's immediate plan is to earn more than half of their pet food revenues from their house brands and to see Regalos distributed in more countries in the region next year.
