Pet food manufacturing is growing fast, and so is the complexity behind it. Americans surpassed $65.8 billion in spending on pet food and treats in 2024*, and they’re looking for specialized diets, premium ingredients, and new formats like wet and prescription blends. 

But scaling up isn’t just about volume. It means rethinking how ingredients are stored, handled, and delivered with precision.

Pet food processing equipment should address these operational realities. From regulatory hurdles to tricky materials like hydrolyzed powders and cellulose fiber, AZO engineers ingredient handling systems that deliver consistency, safety, and efficiency no matter the scale. With successful installations across the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia our solutions support every format: kibble, canned wet food, wet food in pouches, and specialty blends.

Complex Pet Food, Complex Ingredients

Pet food plants today aren’t just bigger — they’re more advanced. And there’s no room for error when you’re producing hundreds of SKUs that must all meet evolving nutritional standards, formulation demands, allergen control protocols, and production goals.

Here’s the top challenges we’re hearing from pet food manufacturers:

• Extensive ingredient variety: From fresh proteins to dried egg powders, the input list is long and diverse. For example, high-quality wet formulations like canned cat food have a laundry list of ingredients.
• Regulatory compliance: Pet food manufacturers must follow stricter hygienic guidelines, more akin to infant food manufacturing than regular food production.
• Moisture-sensitive powders: Ingredients like spray-dried hemoglobin powder or egg powder can clump or react with air, requiring precise environmental control.
• Manual intervention risks: Some powders resist automation. AZO helps improve ergonomics and manual handling of even the most finicky materials so the finished product is dosed accurately.
• Allergen and recipe segregation: Products often contain a full range of multiple protein or fiber sources that must remain isolated.

Solving for the Pet Food Industry's Most Challenging Ingredients

At AZO, we don't design around these problems. We engineer systems that actively solve them.

One of the most difficult materials in pet food production is cellulose, often used in cat food to help with fur movement through the digestive track to alleviate hairballs and improve nutrient digestibility. Cellulose arrives in different forms, either pelletized or as loose powder that tends to compact and bridge and resists flow. We’ve developed a specialized unloading and storage equipment and feeders designed to automate this process and eliminate manual input.

Spray-dried ingredients like egg or blood-based powders also pose challenges. They’re hygroscopic and prone to reabsorbing moisture, especially once opened. 

To address this, all AZO systems are designed to:

• Prevent clumping or rehydration of raw materials
• Keep powders flowable through customized storage vessels and downstream equipment
• Minimize humidity exposure with high-performance conditioned dry air integration and sealed handling environments

Even materials that behave like liquids under ambient conditions can be handled efficiently with the right approach. Our development efforts and lab testing capabilities over the past few years have been focused on automating these common, tricky operations.

Ergonomic and Automated Manual Ingredient Handling

While some ingredients must still be added manually, that doesn’t mean operators have to suffer through inefficient processes with their pet food processing equipment.

AZO's ManDos system provides:

• Modular manual ingredient bins sized to hold individual bags
• Conditioned dry air to protect moisture-sensitive materials
• Guided operator workflows to maximize productivity and reduce human error
• Ergonomic design that supports labor safety and efficiency
• Continuous inventory control to ensure reliable traceability, especially for vitamins or prescription supplements

We also offer automated scale checks to ensure weighing precision, guarantee reliable high quality standards for our customer’s core process steps, and reduce operational unergonomic tasks. This matters most in wet pet food, where batches are large and the consequences of error are expensive. Pet food processing machinery should support operator expertise, not create headaches.

Allergen Separation Built Into the Design

Another top concern our customers share is allergen separation. Allergen control isn’t something you tack on later. It has to be part of the system from day one. That’s why AZO incorporates allergen segregation into the plant layout and conveying method itself.

We favor vacuum conveying over pressure systems to avoid powder leaks that can contaminate the environment or neighboring lines. It’s safer for operators and better for ingredient isolation. From zoning and storage to CIP (clean-in-place) protocols, AZO systems are tailored to meet the highest standards for hygiene regulations and allergen control.

Batch Precision and Continuous Inventory

Handling high-value ingredients like vitamins and nutraceuticals demands precise dosing, but it also requires real-time inventory control.

AZO systems track every input from bin to batch so you:

• Know exactly how much of each ingredient is left
• Automate refills and reordering based on actual usage
• Maintain traceability for compliance and quality control

The AZODOS system, for example, is ideal for feeding preblended powders into the final wet mix. Instead of manually weighing out micro batches, you can produce one large pre-blend and dose it precisely across many recipes. This not only improves throughput, it ensures batch consistency without ingredient segregation.

Real-World Results: Scaling Pet Food Processing

A major pet food company recently partnered with AZO and an EPC to build a new multi-million dollar facility dedicated to wet food production. AZO engineered the front-end dry ingredient handling system to process 24 bulk materials — including whole corn and rice — across more than 200 recipe variations.

We coordinated with the EPC’s engineering and procurement teams to ensure everything from silos to screeners was installed before walls were enclosed. Our solution includes:

• Bulk silos and hammer mills
• AZODOS dosing screws
• Vacuum scale receivers
• Pneumatic conveying
• Screeners and magnets

This system delivers eight batches per hour, or one batch every 15 minutes. This throughput helped the client meet quality targets and support ongoing business growth.

Partners in Smarter Processing Equipment

When you work with AZO, we're more than just a pet food processing equipment supplier. We’re a long-term partner for pet food manufacturers, helping them to navigate:

• Regulatory requirements like NFPA 660 and combustible dust compliance
• Global operations that demand consistency across continents
• Adaptability to our customers’ plant and corporate standards
• Complex ingredients that require custom automation and ergonomic handling

Whether you're producing prescription diets, kibble, wet cans, or novel pet treats, our machine configurations are designed to feed production — and pets — with precision.

Source: *American Pet Products Association