An iconic Kiwi food brand may have found itself on the right side of the Covid crisis.
Wattie’s today launched an upgraded pet food factory in Hawke’s Bay.
This as demand for pet food continues to climb and overseas products remain dogged by delays.
Auckland flat cat Coco and her owner Aston Wainhouse knows all about that.
But finding her favourite food has been tough.
“Her favourite chicken gravy cat food was out of stock, so she was very sad, yeah, that was a bit annoying. I've had to change her cat food. She's very fussy so we're working on that.”
A pet food shortage is just one example of how Covid has slowed down the supply of overseas goods.
Alan McDonald from the Employers & Manufacturers Association (EMA) says container shipping costs have tripled.
“The impact is that it was $4000 a container to get to your door and in some cases now that's up to $12,000.”
Neil Heffer from Heinz Wattie's Limited says the shortage has kept their Hastings factory busy.
“There's definitely been a shortage. This year so far we're making about 40 per cent more pet food than we ordinarily would.”
The $20 million upgrade of their pet food production factory in Hastings couldn't come at a better time.
New state of the art machinery is capable of cooking 10 tonnes of pet food an hour.
“The changes enable us really to ramp up production of our pet food operations so we'll be able to produce about 30 per cent more .”
It's good news as New Zealand is a nation of animal lovers.
Statistics from Companion Animals NZ show Kiwis own 1.2 million cats, along with 851,000 dogs.
With 64 per cent of households owning at least one pet, New Zealand's second only in pet ownership to the United States.
“We see this as an important category for the future and we really wanted to future proof our local operation," Heffer told 1 NEWS.
Those who rely on imports may not see relief until after Christmas according to McDonald.
“Well it's across the board. You can't get imported cars, whiteware's quite scarce, big screen TVs were a problem for a while. One of our members couldn't get the components he needed and actually seriously considered closing his factory temporarily.”
The factory at Wattie’s will eventually run all day, every day.
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