The new tiger states

By 2013 Brazil will have risen to become the second largest pet food market in the world. This was the prophecy of the noted market research institute Euromonitor International last year, and there’s plenty to suggest that the prophecy will be fulfilled. The Brazilian pet market has been booming for years, but the number of pet owners there feeding their dogs and cats on industrially produced food is still small and limited to the big cities. Since these cities are metropolises that are home to millions, however, it doesn’t take much imagination to realise the potential there in terms of new customers. The boom isn’t limited just to keeping dogs, the preferred pets in Brazil. In the aquatics sector too, the leading manufacturing companies in Brazil perceive a big sales market. The considerable number of pet stores, some of them attractively laid out, in the big cities shows that ornamental fish seem to be very popular in Brazil. One testimonial to the growing importance of the country of the Sugar Loaf Mountain in the pet sector is another successful staging of the pet trade show Pet South America. The show took place in Sao Paulo at the beginning of October and underlined its reputation as a meeting point for the entire South American pet product sector. The focus on the new “pet super-power” Brazil is so great that it is often overlooked that another South American country has likewise gone from strength to strength in the pet sector in the last few years: Argentina. Admittedly, at around 24 million the estimated number of pets in the country is not much more than a quarter of the pets kept in Brazil. But anyone who recalls that the pet population in Argentina was still less than 20 million in 2004 gets an impression of the current upswing in pet keeping as a hobby in the big South American countries. Such strong growth rates are otherwise only familiar from Asia. There’s no doubt about it: the new tiger states have started to roar. Yours Ralf Majer-Abele Download: The new tiger states (PDF file)