With the economic and social development, the trend of pet raising is gradually rising, according to CBNDATA's "2019 Pet Consumption Ecological Big Data Report", the number of pet families in China is 99.78 million, a year-on-year increase of 43 in five years9%。As the staple food for pets**, the demand for pet staple food is also growing. According to the data in the "2023 Overview of China's Pet Staple Food Industry" released by the Toubao Research Institute, the market size of China's pet staple food industry has increased from 457 in 2017600 million yuan has steadily increased to 715 in 20224.4 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 938%。It is expected that there is still some room for growth in the future market, conservatively, by 2026, the size of China's staple food market will be 8The compound annual growth rate of 15% increased to 9787.6 billion yuan.
The growing growth of the staple food market has also intensified the competition between brands, and more and more pet food brands are gradually shifting from relying on OEM production to establishing their own factories.
But in fact, the cost of self-built factories is very high, the operating costs are large, and the construction period is also long, why do a large number of brands still want to create their own factories?Everything has to start with the pet grain OEM model.
The ODM processing process of domestic pet food usually includes the following steps: demand communication, formula research and development, proofing confirmation, production stage, quality inspection, packaging and delivery, etc. Although the brand can participate in the whole process and have the right to make decisions, it is difficult for the brand to supervise the key aspects of production such as raw material procurement, product production, and quality inspection in the factory if there is no long-term dispatch of specialists in the factory, and not all foundries will agree to the brand to send specialists.
In practice, most brands can only know the implementation progress and the details of the production process through meetings or other forms in different places, which obviously makes the brand side unable to control the production process well, which may lead to fluctuations in product quality and affect the brand image.
In addition, the brands that choose OEM production are not as differentiated as the products of their own factory brands. Some well-known pet food brands in China, such as NetEase Yanxuan, Gao Yejia, and Honest One Bite have chosen Shandong Hanou Biotechnology as their foundry, Shandong Hanou is the top pet staple food foundry in China, and the strength of product production and quality control is indeed very strong, but multiple brands share the same production line, and the formula is similar, which leads to the actual lack of differentiation of products.
The brands of their own factories rarely face the above problems, taking the well-known domestic pet food brand Xinyuan Zhenbao as an example.
Its own factory, Shanghai Xinyuan Pet Food Factory, was established in 2014, covering an area of 10,000 square meters and a 400-square-meter R&D and quality management center. The production is based on seven quality management system requirements such as BRC, SQF, GMP, HACCP, ISO9001, ISO22000, etc.
Shanghai Xinyuan Pet Food Factory has strict quality control of finished products, from formula research and development to raw material procurement, product production, inspection and testing, etc., the whole process has strict quality control to ensure that product quality always meets high standards.
R&D process: Xinyuan Zhenbao scientific research team is composed of pharmacists, veterinarians, nutritionists, microorganisms, food, pharmaceutical science and other fields of talents, in the formula design stage, the team will continue to debug the formula according to product positioning and pet needs and carry out pet palatability, digestibility, formula process stability, The shelf life of the product and other experiments, and sent to Shanghai Jiao Tong University College of Agriculture and Biology and other professional feeding testing institutions for feeding and efficacy testing, to prove that it meets the requirements before the final determination of the product formula and put into production, rigorous formula research and development process to greatly improve the safety of the product.
Production process: Strict raw material sample testing, real-time monitoring of the production process and quality control through FOSS near-infrared spectrometer, as well as the detection of the production environment control loop and the use of batch number management system to ensure that the products can be traced back to the source.
In addition to testing conventional moisture, protein, fat, ash, calcium, phosphorus, Xinyuan pet food factory is also equipped with a high-performance liquid chromatograph to regularly measure vitamins, amino acids, atomic absorption instrument to determine lead, cadmium, manganese and other heavy metals and trace elements, microplate reader to determine mycotoxins, microbiology laboratory to detect the total number of bacteria, the total number of molds, pathogenic bacteria, etc.
In addition to in-factory self-inspection, Xinyuan will also regularly send different series of raw materials and products to third-party testing institutions for testing, and take a two-pronged approach to ensure the quality and safety of products.
In terms of product development and innovation, Xinyuan Development Treasure scientific research team is composed of pharmacists, veterinarians, nutritionists, microorganisms, food, drug science and other fields, Xinyuan Development Treasure has three major product lines of staple food series, snack series and prescription meal series, and independently develops and produces more than 50 products.
China's pet food industry has been developing for more than 30 years since 1993, with the improvement of people's living standards and the change of pet breeding concepts, China's pet food market continues to expand, with huge market potential and development space, and there are constantly emerging brands into the pet food track, in such a competitive situation, its own factory for pet food brands, is not only the embodiment of quality control and product research and development capabilities, but also the best path for the brand to achieve sustainable development。 Own factories can also help brands optimize production processes, improve resource utilization, reduce waste, etc., reduce production costs and improve profitability. At the same time, self-owned factories can also provide more innovation space for brands, enabling them to launch new products and flavors according to market demand, meet the diverse needs of consumers, and improve their market competitiveness. It can be seen that under the long-term development of the brand, self-built factories are an inevitable trend.