Kormotech celebrates 20 years with greater international ambitions

In September, Ukraine’s largest pet food producer will celebrate 20 years since it was founded by the Vovk family in the Lviv region in the west of the country. In 2022-2023, the company has implemented its anti-crisis strategies, which have supported its growth export plans and the resilience of production facilities and supplies to customers.

We asked Rostyslav Vovk, CEO of Kormotech, about the key elements of the experience of managing the company under major security risks, when the whole country’s future is at stake. Here are five lessons he shares to describe Kormotech’s mindset and values looking back on two decades of its history.

The Family

Kormotech is a second-generation family business, founded by the late Orest Vovk to diversify the family’s yeast business, Enzym, another company he had led from an obsolete Soviet plant to the Ukrainian market leader in the sector. The mission of the new enterprise was to be the first on the national market. It had to be innovative and able to compete with global brands. Thus, the family chose the pet food sector and pioneered the production of high quality pet food in Ukraine. The plant’s capacity outstripped the domestic demand when it opened in 2003, now the company dominates over 1/3 of the market, says Rostyslav Vovk, the son of the founder.

The Team

Not only the family members and their heritage, but also the team and its spirit are crucial. Most of Kormotech’s top managers started out in basic positions in the company in its early years. This solid foundation of the company has nurtured its leaders and encouraged hundreds of other professionals to build long-term careers. “We have been through four major crises that have happened to the Ukrainian economy since 2003, and the team operated business against uncertainty and we came out stronger and stronger each time”, – says Rostyslav Vovk.

The Perspective

The long game approach builds trust and reliability in the business, which in turn secures its supply chains and export strategies, particularly in the countries where we are new to the market. It also reduces the price of mistakes and gives time to turn them into lessons learned. The company develops long-term relations with partners, often acting as a business incubator for suppliers new to the market, teaching them standards, quality management and the business culture of pet food. “We help Ukrainian suppliers to grow and develop with us when they are ready to become global players”, he added.

Flexibility and rapid change

Flexibility and rapid change may be perceived as antithetical to strategic thinking, but in extreme turbulence the speed of switching between A, B, C, D plans means a lot. “Faced with security challenges in the first month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we maintained production but reduced our 650 SKU range to the so-called “war range” (100 SKUs). Having secured the necessary raw and packaging materials in the second half of 2022, we gradually moved to the “crisis assortment” (200 SKUs) and have now fully renewed the pre-war assortment of 650 SKUs”, – says Kormotech CEO. The company has also regrouped strategic teams to manage stable export supply, war challenges and social responsibility programs. This dynamism allowed the company to grow in 2022 and H1 2023 and expand exports to 40 countries, increasing total sales to $124 million in the first “war year”.

Honest mission

Corporate social responsibility reflects the company’s heart, but in today’s consumer culture, it is an investment in customer loyalty. “People want to see that they are buying pet food from a company that shares their values. In my family, I was the one who brought homeless cats home and found them new families. This is one of the reasons why I became involved in developing Kormotech, and this is what the company stands for. We care about pets and motivate people to become pet parents”, – explains Rostyslav Vovk the social mission of Kormotech. The company aims to bring changes to cultural attitudes towards pets in Eastern Europe. The idea is reflected in brand promotion, in various social activities such as the Optimeal veterinary expert hotline 9100 or the Save Pets initiative, which has helped more than 300,000 pets, and even in the interior design of the headquarters in Lviv. Since 2013, we have been implementing projects that teach humane education in schools, support shelters, and help raise the professional level of veterinary medicine. Furthermore, 75% of our employees are parents to a cat or a dog.

Recently Kormotech has established Kormotech Ventures headquartered in London as a stand-alone company that will focus on innovative pet care businesses in Europe and the US seeking early stage investment. “As we continue to grow our core business, we want to ensure the strong entrepreneurial spirit that inspired the founding of Kormotech 20 years ago and ultimately achieve leading positions in our strategic markets,” explained the CEO. The company continues to run the business on the basis of the Ukrainian victory scenario and focuses on the goals of international development, the most important of which is to enter the TOP50 global pet food producers.