Dive Brief:
- Snack and candy maker Mars opened last week a $450 million Royal Canin manufacturing facility in Lewisburg, Ohio, the company’s largest pet food investment for the pet food brand to date.
- The dry pet food factory spans 450,000 square feet, making it the company’s largest dry pet food facility, according to the press release.
- The plant will create up to 270 jobs over the next five years, and produce enough Royal Canin brand dry food to feed 4 million pets annually, Mars said.
Dive Insight:
The facility is part of Mars' $6 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing over the past five years.
Plans for the new factory started as early as 2018, Andy Turner, global VP of value chain operations at Royal Canin, said at the facility’s grand opening last week. The company initially announced the Lewisburg project in March 2021, with a starting investment of $390 million.
The new plant is located on the same property as Royal Canin’s Pet Health Nutrition Center, its global research and development hub. The facility is “highly automated,” Turner said, enabling Royal Canin to make products with the “right nutrition” for cats and dogs.
“One of the most impressive things for me, actually, is that we’re able to produce all of our diets here, which is really important for us,” Turner said. “We can develop the full portfolio in dedicated assets that we’ve installed here in our Lewisburg facility.”
Mars announced last year that it plans to spend over $1 billion on its petcare business, which will focus on various technologies such as artificial intelligence for product development, as well as hiring and upskilling data-focused workers, Fortune reported.
At the Ohio facility, the company also focused on sustainable design and construction, Turner added.
“With air handling, with electrical systems, with recycling and ensuring that from day one, no product is ever going to landfill,” Turner said.
The design aligns with parent company Mars' climate action plan, which it announced in 2023, to spend over $1 billion over the next three years in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2050.
While Mars is known for confectionery brands such as Snickers and M&M’s, its pet care business is its biggest segment, valued at over $30 billion.
The segment is one that the company’s been committed to for many years and Royal Canin is its largest brand globally, Nici Bush, Mars’ chief innovation, science and technology officer, said at the facility’s grand opening. The Lewisburg plant is a strategic investment to drive Royal Canin's science-based innovation through pet health nutrition, she added.
“It will enable us to enhance our ability to provide tailor-made and even personalized nutritional solutions that addresses the health needs and specific health needs of pets, ultimately contributing to their health and well-being,” Bush said.
Over the years, Royal Canin’s business has been “growing exponentially,” said Daryn Brown, president of Royal Canin North America. While the company’s rapid growth has been a “fantastic ride,” it also brought multiple challenges.
“Because we’ve been growing so fast, we haven’t been able to provide the levels of service that we’ve always wanted to,” Brown said at the grand opening. “And now Lewisburg does that very much for us.”
As one facility opens, Royal Canin is set to close another by year’s end. The pet food maker laid off 85 workers at its Rolla, Missouri, factory last month, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act letter. Production from the Rolla facility will transfer to Royal Canin’s other facilities.
