INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- The rise of niche pet food brands and e-commerce is putting new pressure on manufacturers to have more accurate, timely data about the products they're making and the ingredients they're using
- Collaboration between pet food marketers and co-manufacturers is growing — and so is the challenge of securely exchanging proprietary formulation data between those partners
- CFC Tech Services has built technology specifically to solve that data exchange problem, allowing manufacturers and brand owners to cross-reference ingredient information accurately
- AI's implications for the industry are significant but still emerging; the more immediate need is better information infrastructure at the formulation level
- Fresh and semi-moist formats will continue to grow, driving ongoing adaptation in both manufacturing and formulation software
Interview with Andy Watland, owner and president, CFC Tech Service
Petfood Forum Chat: This is a special report from Petfood Forum 2026. I’m Jackie Roembke, the editor-in-chief of WATT Global Media’s Feed Brands, and I’m the host of Petfood Forum Chats. I sat down with industry leaders and innovators to get their take on the trends shaping the global pet food industry
From ingredients and processing to sustainability and the future of pet nutrition, take a minute to listen in on those conversations.
Andy Watland, owner and president, CFC Tech Service: I'm Andy Watland with CFC Tech Services. My background has been throughout my career, almost all formulation related, feed formulation is where I got my start. My first job outta college was being a feed formulator for a feed company. And then, the software that I used ended up being the company that I went to work for next, and I've been with that company ever since. Around 2010, 2012 actually, me and my partner acquired the company. So now I'm still in the feed formulation and pet food related industries. We supply the formulation tool. Of course, having a background in animal science and having been a formulator and worked with nutritionist gives me a real good background to relate to who our customers are and what their needs are, which of course has been, it's progressed since then considerably, but I certainly have that foundation.
Petfood Forum Chat: What do you think are the most important industry or consumer trends that are shaping the industry right now?
Watland: As far as consumer trends, our position or our part in the industry is one or two steps removed from the actual consumer being the supplier to the manufacturers. So one of the things I guess that happens is that we see what's happening on the consumer side through a kind of a lens on what's happening to the manufacturers or the industry as a whole. So we don't necessarily see things secondhand, or at least not from a timing standpoint, but we're not really, don't have our fingers on the consumers themselves, but we certainly see things happen.
And one of the big things I think that's happening, and it's not really a new trend, but I think it's a continuation or a maturing of a previous trend. Of the smaller niche pet food suppliers that supply niche products or supply novel ingredients they've got a unique idea or concept to how to supply better pet food to the industry and the use of e-commerce has facilitated and really expanded on that. It allows the consumers to probably make more educated decisions on what their needs are or what they think their pet food needs are. There's a lot of information on the internet and you have to be a little careful, but I think that's really shaping the consumer side of things and where we find that important to what we do is, it's becoming more important for the manufacturers to have information, to have more information, and have accurate and timely information as it relates to those pet food products and the quality of those products that they're supplying to the consumers.
So that's the important thing that we see. That's why I feel it's important is because it's affecting those manufacturers. And it's influencing the amount of the importance of that data, of that information.
Petfood Forum Chat: Since you've been at the show or just in general, have you recently seen any innovations that have stood out to you?
Watland: Well, the easy answer to that, which is the go-to answer would of course be AI, but I don't think that there's as much other than that whole subject, which can be good or bad or can influence what I mentioned as far as information or not. There's probably not as much necessarily going on to really facilitate where I'm going with the whole information topic as maybe there should be. I think AI might play a part in that a little bit. At that particular subject, not to minimize AI in general. There's gonna be huge implications I think with AI going forward for every industry, not just pet food, but there's really not specifically as much as I think that there. It should be right now, but it probably will be.
It's emerging.
Petfood Forum Chat: How do your company's latest innovations align with these key trends?
Watland: Well, I'm glad you asked it since I've identified it as something that our company has identified as an issue, it of course it would be remiss of me to mention it as something that I think is a need and our company not done something to address it.
And, the nature of what we do is software related as it relates to the formulations. So, information is sometimes overlooked as an important aspect, but it's actually the most important aspect. Without the proper information that you use to build those formulas for, you're not gonna have accurate formulations.
The small companies created a situation where there's a lot more collaboration between the manufacturers and the pet food companies. The company's marketing pet food products, they don't necessarily have manufacturing facilities or you might have a small to mid-size company that does have manufacturing facilities, but not with the ability to manufacture all different kinds of products or maybe have availability of ingredients that they need. So they're gonna have co-packers manufacture product for them and I, and the trend I think that consumer aspect has really created the ripple effect on the industry as there's much more collaboration being done between.
Manufacturers are making a lot of product for somebody else. There's some manufacturers that do nothing other than manufacture product for somebody else. They don't have their own name brand product line. It's interesting because I go into a store and I look at pet food labels probably a lot differently than most people at least outside of the pet food industry.
And, one of the first things I'm always curious about when I see a product that I don't recognize or a company I don't recognize them. Like, I wonder who makes that, I wonder who makes it for them. So I'm always looking at a manufactured by or, you know, a location to gimme some clue as, oh, I wonder who is the manufacturer?
And you would think that, oh, it's only the small guys that are doing this. It's actually sometimes the rather large companies that are utilizing a co-manufacturer due to the fact of location. Just because they, having some product made in an area where they might not have a manufacturing facility, or maybe it's a specific manufacturing technology that they don't have or don't have access to.
So this increase in this collaboration between these companies requires a lot of information to be conveyed between the companies because in order to manufacture accurate products. The person asking you to make a formula needs to know. The information about the ingredients in the manufacturing capabilities that you have.
Without that information, they don't know how to ask the proper question, how to provide the proper solution that they want you to make. So how does that information get conveyed and right now there's a lot of back and forth. I send somebody sends you a formula. Okay, well, does that, is that ingredient that you just referenced, is it what we think it is?
Or is it, are you giving it a slightly different name than we usually think it is. So are we talking about the same ingredients? Are we talking about, did you contribute the correct amount of the parameters of that ingredient? Protein, the fat, the fiber to the ingredient that we actually have on hand.
So you can't make that assumption. The person asking you to make a product can't assume that they know what your ingredients are at that actual manufacturing facility. So that information has to be communicated, and historically that's been rather proprietary type information. Some companies pay a lot of money to accumulate that kind of data, and all of a sudden you're looking at ways to try to communicate that information on a timely basis, on an accurate basis and secure basis.
Long story short, we've seen this, we have customers that are dealing with this and it's a struggle for them. So we've created some technologies that allow them to communicate that information, create that connection and create that cross-reference of data and being able to communicate that data back and forth so that they can accurately. Convey that information, so that plays in part to the whole consumer trend question in two ways.
Number one, there's more of a demand for those types of products that need to be manufactured in that way, and I think it's also becoming more important for pet food suppliers, retailers or wholesalers to provide additional information that those consumers are now starting to demand. They need more reliability. They need more traceability for those types of, in those types of products.
Petfood Forum Chat: You've been in the industry for a long time, you've seen a lot. Based on that, what do you think is gonna happen in the future? Maybe the next five to 10 years out, what's on your radar?
Watland: We do try to look ahead. We end up being reactionary. There's always a little bit of risk with being too proactive. But as far as it relates to formulation and nutrition, it still comes back to that information thing. I think that's gonna improve. There's a lot of information out there, especially as it relates to what the consumers are looking for and what they want. And I think that's gonna start to probably start to level off and probably start to get filtered and maybe conveyed and filtered to be just what's relevant.
We don't create or produce manufacturing equipment or generate or engineer new ways of manufacturing, different forms of product or different methods of packing product, but I think that over the past five to 10 years, we've seen an awful lot of new ways of producing pet food products and packing those products, putting them in semi fresh or semi moist type products that go into these fresh packs. You see a lot of fresh products in pet food, which I think are gonna require a lot of special handling and special packing. So I think there's gonna be technologies going forward to address those types of things to meet those consumer demands where they're looking for feeding their pets a lot more, like how they feed themselves. It's exciting to see what the industry comes up with. And, although we don't co-develop those technologies, we certainly are involved with a lot of them because our software does model a lot of those processes, and so we see a lot of that and have to modify our software to accommodate those. So it is fun to watch. You would think that by now the industry, the animal feed and pit food industry would've thought of everything. We've been in the software industry since the seventies, so you'd think that what more could you possibly develop how many more different ways of formulating diets could there be, but there's just no end.
Petfood Forum Chat: The 2026 edition of Petfood Forum was held April 26–28 in Kansas City, Missouri. For more Petfood Forum news and in-depth event coverage, visit petfoodindustry.com.
