Romanian Pet Food Market Seems Immune to Crisis
The pet food and accessories market in Romania appears to be immune to the looming economic crisis, as specialist retailers continue development, even doing it at a fast clip, and when it comes to consumer spending, Romanians are buying cheaper food for them but not for their pets.
“An interesting fact to point out is that downtrading is growing, we are seeing shoppers go for cheaper in more and more product categories to keep their household spending in check amid a rise in prices. This could be seen as early as of the last quarter of 2021. However, there is still premiumization in certain categories such as coffee beans and ground coffee, yogurt, milk-based desserts, pet food, cheese specialties,” Diana Scaunasu, consumer panel director with GfK Romania said a little while ago.
Romanians own 4.4 milion cats and almost as many dogs (4.2 million), but only 290,000 birds and 90,000 fish. Almost half of the households in Romania own a dog, a cat or both, the highest rate in Europe. The explanation for this rate is that rural households own dogs or cats, which are taken into account even though their owners do not necessarily see them as pets.
As people adopted or bought a pet when forced inside their homes by the pandemic, the pet food and accessories market rose to more than RON 3 billion (approx. EUR 0.6 billion) in 2020 for the first time, an increase of 23% year-on-year.
The market had been growing for several years and continued to grow in 2021, when total sales stood at more than RON3.6 billion, according to estimates of market research company Euromonitor. Sales almost tripled in 2015-2021 and will continue to increase in 2022, though largely driven by a rise in prices.
Source: www.zfenglish.com, September 2022