Spotlight on Brazilian pet food market: Strong and growing

Brazil has been an up-and-coming, growing pet food player for some time now, and a pandemic and economic disruption haven’t stopped its momentum (or did so only momentarily). Consider: The Brazilian pet food market is increasing 5.6% by volume annually; ranks second in production globally, turning out 4.2 million tons a year; and represents more than half (54.5%) of the entire pet care industry in the country.

And opportunities for further growth abound, because commercial pet food has only 45% penetration in Brazilian households; the market potential is 10.2 million tons produced a year. After all, Brazil has 160 million pets, giving it the third largest pet population worldwide (after the U.S. and Japan), with 60 million dogs, 30 million cats (and growing) and 32 million pet-owning households.

Three impressive Brazilian pet companies

All this data come courtesy of Jose Edson Galvao, president of Abinpet, the Brazilian pet product association, and board counselor of Instituto Pet Brasil, a sister organization focused on pet retail. (That landscape is comprised of 42,000 independent pet shops in the country, with about 10% of the market belonging to the superstore chains Cobasi and Petz, which recently merged.)

He shared it during a press tour of several pet product companies in and near Sao Paulo, September 18-20, 2024, which I was fortunate to be invited to join. While two of the companies we visited — Pet Society, which offers grooming products, and Vetnil, specializing in pet and equine medications and supplements — were outside the pet food category, I was struck by similarities between their strategies and operations and those of pet food producers, including Adimax, the third company we toured.

For example, I observed:

• All three companies lean heavily on pet humanization, just as most other pet product companies do around the world do, balanced by scientific research on what’s best for the pets;
• All were started by entrepreneurs who saw a market opening or didn’t see the type of products they thought pets deserved;
• All are relatively young, founded in the past 20 to 30 years, and growing quickly: 20-30% a year for Vetnil (and interestingly, its business switched from 50% pets/50% equine pre-pandemic to 70/30 now, a function of the growing popularity of pets), with the opening of a brand new headquarters and plant to accommodate the expansion. Adimax opened a new processing facility in June 2024 while also expanding its main facility at its headquarters;
• Quality and safety are key for all three companies, with rigorous protocols and standards (and spotless factories);
• Other shared values include innovation, sustainability, employee respect and wellness (two of the companies have cafeterias with free lunch daily for all staff; the third will be soon adding that) and commitment to social causes.

Focus on Instituto Adimax

Our tour of Adimax included a visit to its institute, which I assumed was dedicated to research and development or a similar area. Our guide at the headquarters had explained that the company supported many social projects, especially guide dogs for visually impaired people, but I thought that meant mainly donations and promotions.

Then we arrived at the institute, and I realized it’s actually a training facility for guide dogs, plus assistance dogs for children on the autism spectrum. One of only five such institutes in Brazil, it was built and is operated by Adimax, with support from other pet care companies.

Those five institutes are trying to breed, train and match guide dogs for a significant portion of the 7 million people with blindness or vision impairments in Brazil. Yet, in its six years, this institute has only been able to make 93 dogs available for that population, representing about half of all guide dogs currently in place (196) — not for lack of effort and dedication but because they take care to do all the necessary steps right (breeding, socializing, evaluation and training of the dogs and, most importantly, spending a lot of time finding the right dog for each person fortunate enough to get on the recipient list).

Each dog is provided completely free to the person, after being fully trained, spayed/neutered and vaccinated, and recipients are allowed to revisit the institute at any time for additional training or other support. They also receive continuing communications and a 50% discount on dog food from Petz stores.

Though I have some familiarity with how therapy and similar support dogs are trained, I didn’t know all the elements that go into finding and preparing the right guide dog for each person. For example, puppies, mainly Labradors, are bred at the institute; once they are weaned, each goes to a volunteer family that socializes the puppy for a year, introducing it to as many different situations and people as possible.

After that phase is complete, the young dog returns to the institute, where training begins; evaluation of the dog’s suitability (including temperament) for becoming a guide dog or assistance dog takes place early on. (Dogs that aren’t quite right for either situation are adopted out or placed in another important role; for example, one particularly high-energy dog ended up becoming a “sniffer” dog at an airport.)

The institute works diligently to match the best dog with each eligible person. As training nears completion, the person goes to the institute and spends 15 days at the on-site hotel, bonding with his or her dog and learning how to work with it.

It was quite the impressive and inspirational place and experience; they even had us walk, wearing completely blacked-out glasses, through a sensory tunnel so we could get an idea of what it’s like to be blind and encounter different obstacles, varying surfaces under foot and other situations. Going through the tunnel (holding onto a handrail, thankfully!) took only a few minutes, but it was enough to provide at least a low-level understanding of what visually impaired people deal with daily.

This, plus everything else I observed during the tours, helped confirm the impression that the future is bright for the Brazilian pet food and pet care industries.

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Note: This has been updated to correct the number of guide dogs trained by Instituto Adimax and the total placed in Brazil overall.