The incredible level of variety and product differentiation maybe good for the owners (and of course their pets), but it creates a logistical nightmare for the producers’ manufacturing and packaging operations. Not only do they have to cater for a wider choice of flavours and packaging formats, but they also have to create mixed packaging arrays that deliver the all-important dietary variety.
There has also been a major shift away from the typical 400g tin. The humanisation of pet food has resulted in more premium-look-and-feel packaging – on a par with human food packaging – with single-portion servings of fresher food gaining significant headway in this crowded market. Compounding these widely varying demands is a growing decline in plastic acceptance, which is seeing a move back to metal and recyclable packaging, albeit in varying sizes. Manufacturers have certainly got interesting times ahead and, as a result, so do the packaging technology companies.
Cama is in the perfect position to help pet food companies – both large and small – to realise greater efficiencies through the automation of packaging operations. We’ve been supporting this industry for over 15 year now. We’ve seen the natural progression of packaging, starting with cans, onto trays, into pouches and now back to cans again. We’ve also addressed the multi-flavour issue thanks to tightly integrated and highly flexible automation infrastructures and in-house-develop robotic pick-and-place systems. Indeed, this industry is not unlike the coffee industry, in which we are a market leader, with its huge variety of packaging concepts
Learn more on our Petfood industry page:
https://www.camagroup.com/portfolio-items/pet-food/
