ISLAMABAD: According to a Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) notification issued on April 18, the Organic Meat Company Limited (TOMCL) has successfully secured the approval to export “Pet Chews” to Canada. With this, TOMCL has become the first approved Pakistani company to export these products to Canada.
In addition to this, TOMCL has also secured the approval to supply “Meat and meat products/ chilled and frozen” to Uzbekistan by the State Committee for Veterinary Medicine and Livestock Development to the Republic of Uzbekistan.
This notification is perhaps a watershed moment in the history of pet food in Pakistan. There’s a misconception that pet food is predominantly imported, and not locally manufactured. However, Pakistan has a thriving local pet food industry which has been operational for years. Given the inflation and skyrocketing prices of imports, there is scope to further expand and strengthen the local pet food industry.
While markets are flooded with imported pet food at exorbitant prices, in June 2022 the government abruptly banned imported pet food. This created a chasm in the market which was filled by the local industry.
This wasn’t the first time. When COVID-19 struck, pet food imports greatly suffered. Though importers started buying huge quantities of stocks, there wasn’t too much left in the market.
Profit reached out to Rana Mubeen, a wholesaler dealing with both imported and local pet food in June 2022. He said, “when news of a ban on the import of pet food came, the shopkeepers amassed a big stock and many pet owners took the big stock to their houses. Now due to higher prices, there is some reduction in demand.”
As a result of this, imported pet food was no longer a lucrative business and the local industry picked up.
Profit also reached out to Tahir Bajwa in July 2022, a major importer of pet food and president of the Pet Food Importers and Distributors Association of Pakistan. Bajwa believed that the pet food business had grown so much in Pakistan in the last three years that the field had now become an industry.
Wasif Ali, an official of Seasons Group of Companies, assured Profit that the quality of locally manufactured pet food was also good, despite a general preference for imported food.
“We have a perception that there is nothing better than imported food but I will not comment on any imported food. The quality of these can be very good or very bad but if I talk about my company’s dog and cat food then its quality is very good and since the ban on imported food our demand has also increased. Our food is tested regularly and we also give our customers an open offer that they can have this food quality tested from anywhere if they want,” he said.
Similarly, Ahmed Khan, owner of local puppy and dog food, d’Amigo, which was launched in 2021 in the Pakistani market, told Profit that the reality is that the quality of local dog food and imported dog food wasn’t the same.
However he added that, “ this does not mean that the dog food we produce is of low quality. The fact is that we are new players in the market and the companies that produce imported dog food are decades old. People have come to trust them, and of course the quality of this food has also improved with the passage of time. But if we talk about Pakistan, where was the practice of imported dog food or cat food 15 or 20 years ago? People used to feed their pets chicken, beef, bread, yogurt and vegetables and the health of the pets of that time was undoubtedly enviable. Then, with the passage of time, packaged dog and cat food came into vogue. People thought that maybe feeding this food could improve the quality of dogs and cats, and meet their nutritional needs.”
“In comparison (to imported food), if we talk about local food, the ingredients are not less in it, the quality is also good and the price is also very low. I don’t know if pet food sellers have more profit in selling imported food or in selling local food but I do know that our local shopkeepers are helping us to market our products,” he said.
People used to give chicken to their pets as an alternative to imported food but that too, has become expensive now. Oatmeal, rice, vegetables, yogurt, milk, bread – everything is expensive now. Inflation has had a major impact on this business and will continue to do so in the future.
In this space, new pet food manufacturing companies are quickly emerging in the country. The industry is growing bigger by the day, and eventually competition would lead to competitive prices as well. The latest PSX notification is a further affirmation of this. The export approvals would be of insurmountable value to the company, reaping huge profits for its shareholders and contributing to a developing industry in Pakistan.
