Eka Global sees positive trend as Thailand’s pet food export grows
Demand for longevity packaging on the rise
While Thailand’s pet food industry is enjoying significant growth as more consumer worldwide start to have their own pets during the COVID-19 pandemic, Eka Global, the leading longevity packaging producer also reaps the benefit from this trend.
Similarly, ready-to-eat food products become more popular, driving demand for longevity packaging. To help food producers capture this upward trend, Eka Global will arrange a series of roadshows across Thailand to educate small food producers adopt new technology that lengthens shelf life and increase opportunity to market their products worldwide.
Mr. Chaiwat Nantiruj, Eka Global’s Group CEO, said the company enjoyed satisfactory growth during the first 10 months of this year. Both packaging for ready-to-eat and premium pet food businesses have witnessed exceptional expansion, following the global trend.
For the pet food business, further expansion is expected. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce Jurin Laksanawisit recently said during the opening of Pet Fair South East Asia 2022 that pet food is a star export from Thailand. It generated approximately 65 billion baht revenue to the country. During the first nine months of 2022 (January-September 2022), Thai pet food industry has already brought to the country 75 billion baht, which is 34.4% higher than the revenue it generated for the entire 2021. This also represented continuous growth for the past 37 months or over three years. If this trend continues, Thailand will soon become the world’s No. 1 pet food exporter.
Chaiwat added, “Thailand is currently the world’s 3rd largest pet exporter after Germany and the US. The country has very high potential as the global pet food leader thanks to their high quality, hygiene and advanced and green production process. They can best address meet global demand, pet humanization trend and environmentally friendly trend. Both pet lovers and green consumers have strong purchasing power. When couple with the benefits from FTAs, Thai pet food industry has strong potential, and so does longevity packaging industry.”
In leveraging Thai pet food industry and make it become the leading global premium pet food producer, there is an urgent need to increase the industry’s eco-system. Innovation and circular-economy based development shall be adopted in order to promote sustainable growth. This move will also prep Thai pet food industry ready for the carbon tax introduced in some markets worldwide.
The ready-to-eat food market has also become more popular. It is forecasted that the ready-to-eat food industry will continue to grow through 2024. This trend has been expanding significantly since the outbreak of COVID-19 and global consumers tend to adopt this new behavior of ordering food for home delivery and buying cooked food in modern packages. They tend to pay high attention to convenience, value for money and food hygiene. Shelf life is also a big concern because consumers go outside less.
Chaiwat added that Eka Global would continue to help SMEs in Thailand cope with the new trend and have easy access to longevity packaging that will lengthen their product shelf life. Among others, the Modified Atmosphere Packaging Process (MAP) technology is proven effective in extending food product shelf life. Eka Global’s innovative packages can also support such food processing technology and, therefore, ready to help Thai food producers increase competitiveness in the global market.
As part of Eka Global plan to promote modern production technology among SME, the company plans to organize a series of road shows to the north, south, northeast and central regions across Thailand. The road shows are aimed at educating SMEs of the new food processing technology, its benefits and how Eka Global’s knowhow and longevity packaging innovations can help them. The first road show will be kicked off in the first quarter of 2023.
