Trade association PMMI released its Pet Food Market Assessment 2013, which found the petfood market is driven by many of the same factors as the human food market, including intense competition, growth in specialty products such as premium and functional petfoods, and demands of the Food Safety Modernization Act.
Five petfood manufacturers produce more than 70 percent of the petfood products currently sold in the US, the report found. More than 85 percent of the petfood sold in the US is manufactured in the US, as well, which the report attributes to perceptions of quality, transportation costs and a highly saturated marketplace.
The US makes up 38 percent of the global market for petfood, accounting for US$19.85 billion of the US$56 billion global market in 2011, a projected US$20.54 billion in 2012 and US$26.6 billion by 2015. However, double-digit growth is expected in the Latin American and Asian petfood markets. “Brazil stands out as the fastest-growing market for petfood. India and China are growing at double digits, too, but by 2016, we expect to see Brazil as the world’s second-largest petfood market,” said Jorge Izquierdo, vice president, market development, PMMI.
Much of the petfood market's growth has been in organic, natural and premium petfoods, which have all grown at nearly 20 percent per year for the past two years. Global demand in this market will account for nearly 32 percent of the petfood market in 2013, the report projects. On the other hand, some products outside the premium petfood category have grown very little, such as wet dog food, which is projected to grow less than 1 percent in 2013.
