Fresh overtaking wet, growth in the Americas, and more: key trends from CAGNY

At the 2025 Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference, pet industry giants like Nestlé, Colgate Palmolive, and Freshpet revealed key insights into their growth strategies.

Nestlé

CEO Laurent Freixe says that pet care was the second largest category for Nestlé and the largest category in the Americas, making up around 30% of its business. He pointed to a “big geographic opportunity” for expansion in Asia, Oceania and Africa.

He also mentioned Purina Pro Plan, which has posted significant organic growth. “We’ve doubled the sales, and it’s really driven by just deep consumer insights of helping pet parents better serve the needs of their family members, their pet family members,” he said, without specifying the timeline of the doubled growth in the sector.

Freixe believes this is driven by the company’s “world-class” research and development (R&D) network in pet care.

Colgate

At Colgate Palmolive’s CAGNY presentation, the company’s Chairman, President and CEO Noel Wallace commented on Hill’s Pet Nutrition’s 3% volume growth in 2024. This was despite a 0.5% decline in organic sales for the sector, which was driven by reduced private label sales. The company recently decided to move Hill’s out of the private label production sector.

Wallace says the company is “getting the supply network adjusted” to grow in new segments for Hill’s. In particular, it is eyeing wet cat food, which makes up a small share of its portfolio despite estimating that it makes up a slim majority of sales in the cat food market overall. He states that a new plant in Tonganoxie, Kansas, is expected to increase flexibility in wet food production.

He also noted large growth in puppy food for sensitive stomachs since 2018, saying that this therapeutic could grow in small dogs and cats.

Freshpet

Fresh off an earnings call in which he revealed the company’s first income-positive financial year, Freshpet’s CEO Billy Cyr told CAGNY attendees that the fresh dog food maker had reached a “profitability inflection point.” In recent years, the company has rapidly grown its sales volume and is now distributed in 36,500 refrigerators across 28,000 stores, mostly in the US.

Cyr says he expects the company to soon reach 12-month trailing net sales of $1 billion (€950M). However, he emphasized that there is still significant room to grow. “That’s one billion dollars in a single brand, in a single category, in pretty much a single country,” he said.

Freshpet has a small cat food and dog treats business and a limited business outside the US, which could be major growth opportunities for the company in the future.

At the same event, General Mills (GM) CEO Jeff Harmening also revealed details about the company’s new initiatives and plans to expand market share internationally, as recently reported by GlobalPETS.