Pet food processing

07-02-2008 | Home | Article

Pet food is of great importance worldwide, and the production is steady growing and with an ever increasing development in processing methods. New equipment and techniques improve the feeding value of pet food.

Two obvious trends have appeared the last few years.

Firstly, we see extruders with much higher capacities. These are mainly used to answer mass production requirements for mature core markets. Secondly, we see an increase in small and medium size compact and very flexible production lines dedicated for processing very high added-value products.

In addition, manufactures are becoming more aware of the specific needs during the different life stages of pets, and reflect this in tailor-made products and more premium brands.

We therefore see an increasing amount of pet food with different shapes, colours and use of raw materials and ingredients entering the market.

One can speak of treats, moist and semi moist, bi-coloured, co-extruded, premium and super premium, nutritional, functional and so on. These products can be extruded in compact lines ranging from 300 to 1000 kg/h while lines with a higher capacity are now standardized for "standard" pet food (10 to more than 16 T/h output).

News: Innovative control system for pet food

Article: Twin screw extrusion for bicoloured kibbles
Article: Cooling of extruded dry pet food

Article: Trends in pet food and fish feed extrusion

Weblink: Extrusion pet food news