Poultry company Caribbean Broilers Group, CB, will be developing a pet food plant at its Newport Mills complex in Kingston, marking its re-entry to that market but on a wider scale than a decade ago.
The project is still in its planning phase, but it includes the manufacture of foods for dogs, rabbits, cats, fish and birds at the new facility, which it hopes to start constructing in 2026, which will operate as True Pet Food, a unit created five years ago in 2018 within the Newport Mills division.
The size of the investment to be made was not disclosed.
CB once produced dog food when its feed mill was housed in the parish of St Ann. But, when the operation migrated to Kingston a decade ago, that element of its portfolio was subsumed by other priorities.
“Several years ago, we manufactured dog food in Jamaica under a brand called NutraDog 22, but, when we moved to Kingston, we didn’t bring over that production because the equipment had gotten old,” said CB Group’s Head of True Pet Food, Tina Hamilton.
“At the new complex, we were getting a brand-new feed mill and we said we wanted to create a pet food plant as well. But that didn’t happen; and over the years so many other things took priority. However, that plant is definitely something that we will be working on over the next few years,” Hamilton told the Financial Gleaner.
There are no known producers of pet foods in Jamaica currently. CB would become the sole manufacturing entity in that space if its plans are executed.
The company otherwise remains engaged in the pet food distribution market, and deepened that operation three years ago when it inked a deal with a manufacturer of dog foods in the United States to produce True Pet Food on its behalf.
The outsourcing arrangement with the unnamed American company began in 2020, but even before that CB was importing kibble and selling it to farmers in plain, white plastic bags.
“We didn’t have a brand on it but, based on the feedback that we got from our clients, we decided to create the True Pet brand and we went to market with our dog food in 2020, but the COVID-19 outbreak happened just a few months later, which significantly affected sales. So we had to go grassroots and start with the breeders,” Hamilton said.
True Pet Food currently competes against top US imported brands such as Pedigree and Purina that are popular in Jamaica, but CB will be rolling out a pet care campaign centred around its dry kibble and other pet food choices, to entice consumers to its locally produced brand and build up market share.
Outside of Jamaica, True Pet Food is also sold in Antigua & Barbuda, Dutch St Maarten and French St Martin, but CB wants to expand into the Barbados, Cayman Islands, Trinidad & Tobago and St Vincent & the Grenadines markets.
“The fact the product is made for Caribbean dogs makes a big difference. A lot of the dog food that comes into the country are made in North America but then those products are made for dogs that are inside,” said Hamilton – meaning, they cater to in-house pets.
“Their diet will look very different from a dog in a tropical country” where dogs generally venture or reside outdoors and are exposed to different elements, she said.
CB True Pet Food’s target market currently includes security firms, dog breeders, farmers, veterinary clinics and households, but that’s set to widen when the company ventures into the production of more categories of pet foods.
In the dog food category, it sells dry kibble only, but is exploring the addition of wet and medicated dog foods, once the new plant is commissioned and True Pet’s production is insourced.
CB Group has produced feed for animals for more than 35 years, through the Newport Mills division, mainly under the Nutramix and Front Runner brands. Newport Mills is a producer of mash, crumbled or pelleted feeds for poultry, pig, cattle, horse, goat and sheep. The company also does some amount of rabbit food and other speciality feeds.
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