Besides keeping employees healthy, pet product delivery or availability at retail outlets most challenges pet food and treat producers’ businesses worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Petfood Industry is conducting a global survey of professionals working for dog, cat and other pet food companies, ingredient or equipment suppliers, packaging manufacturers and others.
How is COVID-19 affecting your pet food business?
By sharing how your pet food business is coping with the novel coronavirus crisis, you can contribute and learn how the overall global industry is faring.
The majority of respondents, 37% as of early April, selected employee safety and health as the number 1 challenge to their pet food company. While health dominates concern during a pandemic, 20% indicated that product delivery or availability issues at retail were their top challenge. Ingredient shortages and inconsistent supply were the top difficulty for 14% of respondents. Canceled orders or lost work due to uncertainty most concerned 11% of Petfood Industry survey respondents.
Pet food sales during COVID-19 pandemic
In a Petfood Industry poll, 52% of 81 respondents stated that sales increased substantially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another 28% reported that sales had increased somewhat. While the panic buying surge won’t continue, 40.7% of survey respondents still see increased sales coming in the rest of the year, while 35% believe they will level off.
“All segments for dog and cat food saw significant growth versus the previous year, but dry food appears to be coming out slightly ahead,” said Maria Lange, vice president of strategic verticals pet and cannabis for Nielsen. “In the weeks leading up to March, both wet food and treats saw stronger year-over-year dollar growth than dry food, but dry has seen the strongest year-over-year growth since COVID-19 buying trends began.”
