The international pet food market

The new number 2, Brazil, who moved the United Kingdom from this position in 2017, Mexico, but also Russia are the names of the states who got people talking last year due to their high sales growth in pet food. Apart from the undisputed number 1, the USA, most leading pet food countries however, only achieved modest growth in sales last year. This is the result of a survey by the market research provider Euromonitor International.
Germany ranked behind the USA, Brazil, and the United Kingdom at rank 4 with sales of 3 894 bn dollars. A year before, sales amounted to only 3 810 bn dollars. France and Japan follow on the remaining places. With sales to the amount of 2 796 bn dollars, Russia has overtaken Italy for the first time and moved up to rank 7. The ninth place has been taken by Australia with only slight growth in 2017 and is ahead of Mexico which increased its sales from 1 788 bn dollars to 1 923 bn dollars.

Russia is currently the only one of the states growing strongest with pet food to be represented. The country was able to increase its sales by 14.8 per cent from 2016 to 2017. Double-digit growth in this period was also recorded by Vietnam (+13.7 per cent), the United Arab Emirates (+13.5 per cent), Indonesia as well as Thailand (both +12.1 per cent) and Colombia (+11.9 per cent).

However the clear growth winner according to Euromonitor International is the South American country Venezuela, which was able to achieve growth in the evaluation period of over 300 per cent. According to media reports, a non-governmental organisation has an explanation for this astonishing development: more and more Venezuelans, unable to afford anything else, were buying dog food to feed their families. Other strong emerging pet food markets, where pet food is presumably really only eaten by pets, are China (+34.3 per cent), Argentina (+21 per cent) and India (+20.9 per cent) according to Euromonitor International's survey.