For nearly 50 years, Mackle Petfoods have been creating high quality pet food at their family-owned farm and factories in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The secret to their longevity in the industry? As well as sticking to their main principles of creating food to promote overall health and maintain a healthy digestive system for our pets, they are constantly innovating to keep up with the demands and trends within the marketplace.
Mackle Petfoods’ leading brand is Naturo Natural Pet Food, a 100% natural pet food containing up to 60% high quality meat in their dog range, and 80% in their cat range. These natural ingredients are supplemented with essential vitamins, minerals, and oils, with no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives added. Each product is created alongside leading nutritionists and undergoes stringent tasting panels to ensure that not only does Naturo taste delicious, but that it meets the nutritional needs of our dogs and cats.
Naturo generated multi-million-pound sales last year and has exciting plans for 2021 and beyond. Recent Nielsen data (December 2020) shows Naturo wet dog food continues to hold position as the Number 1 Natural Wet Dog Food in GB supermarkets, commanding 5% market share and growing ahead of the category overall.
Naturo was born in 2010 following the overwhelming trend within the market of the humanisation of our pets, which began to see our dogs and cats as four-legged family members. This humanisation, paired with a more health-conscious shopper, showed a gap in the market for a natural solution that ensured pets were receiving a highly nutritional, natural pet food, that also was extremely palatable.
Options in the Naturo range include Grain Free Wet Food, Grain Free Dry Food, Wet Food with Brown Rice, and Grain & Gluten Free options, catering for all stages of a dogs’ life from Puppy, through to Adult and Senior years.
Fully traceable from farm to bowl, Naturo has grown its variety from 4 products to over 30 in the past decade. Significant investment was placed into the brand by Mackle Petfoods in 2020, announcing £5.7m being allocated for Naturo’s growth. This is in addition to previous investments that seen a purpose-built plastic tray facility and fully automated pot line being added to their state-of-the-art facilities.
Seeing a trend growing amongst shoppers of buying in bulk, less frequently, Naturo released their 12 pack varieties, exclusive to Pet Trade and their website in 2020. These 12 packs come in their Adult Dog Grain Free 400g trays, Adult Dog Grain & Gluten Free 390g cans and Adult Dog with Rice 400g trays. This larger pack format quickly became the bestselling product for Naturo on pet trade shelves and online.
To find out more about Naturo, and how you can become a stockist, please click here
