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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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