Dry dog food update: Growth from ongoing premiumization

As reported in Packaged Facts, “Pet Food in the U.S.,” the top dry dog food marketers are Nestlé Purina (drawing 29% of purchasers) and Mars (at 19%). Three marketers form a second tier, by this customer base metric: Post, with its purchase of most of JM Smucker’s pet food brands (10%); General Mills, with Blue Buffalo (10%); and Colgate-Palmolive, with Hill’s Science Diet (8%).

All these top-tier dry dog food marketers are giants in the larger consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, and all but Colgate-Palmolive are general food market kingpins, underscoring that — with pets as family — pet food products are core family shopping products.