An Era of Proactive Petcare

by Niamh Cassidy, Managing Editor, International PetFood

The attitudes of pet owners has been seen to be rapidly changing in recent years, with ‘pet humanisation’ a trend often heard of by those in the petfood industry. Pet ‘parents’ view their pets health as they would they own siblings, as pets become another member of the family, and are treated as such.

The increased attention on animal welfare has led to more focus on the nutritional value of animal feeds; reactive and proactive animal care is translated into nutrition and growing supplement market in petfood and animal feed, which brings our attention the UK and ADM Protexin. ADM Protexin, a purpose-built headquarters and factory opened in Somerset, UK in 2010, produces various pet and animal probiotic supplements, including for humans, equine, dogs, cats and rabbits. ADM Protexin facility has been growing rapidly, and is now double the size since they first moved in reflecting double digit growth each year. More expansion is planned in the future.

The facility

International Petfood magazine had the privilege of being shown round the factory in July this year to witness firsthand the production process and care that goes into making these products. This included the Quality Control Laboratories, the research laboratories and the manufacturing and packaging facilities.

Our team sat down with: James Kyffin, the Commercial Director Pet Nutrition for EMEA and Business Development Director – PAW (Pet Animal Wellbeing) also for EMEA; Zoe Marshall-Jones, Global Director – CD&D (Create, Design & Develop) for Pet; Lee Goddard, Operations Director at ADM Protexin and Sam Bly, Operations Manager at ADM Protexin to discuss the companies facilities, growth, product range and why probiotic products are needed in health care for humans, animals and pets. With over 90 worldwide distributors, ADM Protexin has strong markets in the UK, USA and Australia. It manufactures rigorous in-house quality testing and quality control of all raw materials and products.

.The products

ADM Protexin produces pre-, pro- and post-biotics for a range of brands, including Bio-Kult for humans, Protexin Vet for dogs, cats and rabbits, Protexin Pet for dogs, Equine Premium for horses and Lepicol. They’ve been using more post-biotics lately in pet formulations due to their positive shelf-life stability and application processing.

ADM’s bestselling pet product is Prokolin, which targets gastrointestinal health – a more reactive example of petcare. Its proactive options include daily supplements, supporting the gut and digestive system daily. The supplements are designed to complement animal feed and petfood, with science-backed functional ingredients, ensuring guidelines are followed so as not to dilute the nutrition involved. In 2023, ADM won a pet innovation award for Cats and Dogs’ Skin and Coat Care Product of the Year, called DermalEase Drops and Mousse Solution. This award recognises the brand’s line of research-based probiotic supplements and innovative products, trusted by pet owners globally.

The pet humanisation trend

When speaking to the team at the facility, we discussed the impact of Covid-19 on sales and demand. “People paid more attention to their pets during that period, since they were working from home. There was definitely a trend in pet humanisation, and therefore viewing pet’s health differently. Covid brought awareness to infection and how to prevent being susceptible to infection, using predictive tools. Humans were more aware of their own health and take supplements to support their immunity and other aspects. Covid really highlighted the need to have a healthy immune system. That then translates over to pets as well, since we recognise health needs in ourselves, the awareness around implementation and maintenance is transferred to pets,” says Mr James Kyffin. “It’s clear pet parents are transferring their health requirements and observations to animals, with an increased desire to keep pets healthier and avoid illness. When we see what’s happening on the human side, that often impacts how we look at the animal side. Proactive nutrition is definitely growing and we’re seeing pet owners wanting preventative solutions in the interest of gut health, the skin or the joints,” he adds.

UK politics impacting production

Curious to how Brexit and the UK government announcing the removal of red tape from the agricultural sector had impacted, we asked for the team’s thoughts on how these announcements impacts them. “Initially Brexit made things more difficult on the customer’s side. It takes longer to ship products with issues at customs. Less red tape obviously would be fantastic,” adds Lee Goddard, the Operations Director at ADM Protexin.

Sustainability, traceability and quality

Mr Goddard says, “We always do vendor checks to make sure that we’re using sustainable sources and all our products are natural. We have assurances that our supply chain has sustainability at the heart of the issue. Sustainability, cost of transportation, shipping, etc is a big issue for the animal feed and milling side also.”

ADM Protexin pride itself on its high quality control, safety and traceability of raw materials and packaging. It has seen a growing trend of customers being interested in sustainable feed chains, highlighting the need to enforce traceability for all its raw materials from the moment it is delivered from reputable sources and secured onsite, all the way to the finished product. Quality is essential, with numerous and continuous checks and micro-testing being carried out in the internal and external laboratories. At the end of the day, the product must not only offer a health benefit but be safe, and therefore it must be produced from an assured base which maintains the highest quality.

Health indications and proactive animal care

Currently, ADM Protexin formulate its supplements for a range of health indications, such as cognitive, digestive, immunity, gut and dental in addition to supporting sport activities, women’s health and skin care products. The company is looking at developing and expanding into other health possibilities. The idea is to compliment nutrition and focus on increasing nutrients that support a particular health indication, the goal being prevention of illness – “and the possibilities are endless!” concludes Mr Kyffin.

Published in the September 2024 issue of International Pet Food.