Animal Health Critical To Food Sustainability

The R7.4 billion animal health industry is critical for both South Africa’s sustainable food production and growing number of companion animals, and it shares many of the challenges faced by the broader healthcare logistics sector.

South Africa accounts for less than 1% of the global Animal Health market, estimated at around US $40b, so the opportunity for growth in the country and Africa is significant.

Production animals account for 76% of the local market, and include co-operatives, pig and poultry houses, feedlots, feed mills, veterinarians and vet practices, vet wholesalers, laboratories, retail outlets and exports.

The companion animal market in South Africa accounts for 24% of total revenues, but is growing as people increasingly turn to pets for companionship. They range from isolation forced by Covid-19 lockdowns to the negative impact of social media (many online friends, but few physical companions) and changing lifestyle trends – people getting married later, having less children and living longer.

DSV’s approach to Animal Health is built around a clear understanding of the requirements for sustainable food production and the welfare and wellbeing of both production and companion animals.

Ross Malcolm, Director Client Solutions, Healthcare Animal Health, says DSV offers a well-regulated and controlled solution to manage scheduled and OTC products in every environment, including cold chain, ambient, hazardous, flammable, diagnostic and feed additive.

“Our activity based costs solution provides space, resources and solutions to manufacturers, but allows them to scale up and down without paying for what is not needed. This means that seasonal fluctuations, volume stocking, disease outbreaks, and environmental factors affecting animal health can be accommodated when required, in a shared facility environment, optimizing scale of economy for our animal health customers.”

DSV’s preventative and curative strategies help mitigate the challenges confronting the production industry, including disease, poor roads in rural areas and bio-security – and the potential for devastation cannot be underestimated. Malcolm says disease in a poultry house can claim upwards of 30,000 birds in a day.

Rural environments with poor road infrastructure need different solutions, including packaging (which is more durable and protects content longer) and COD and POD management, and cold chain packaging solutions have been improved to meet bio-security challenges.

Feedlots, which require cold chain vehicles, palleted deliveries and unique delivery times, and some animal feed-mills run 24 hours a day in some cases.

DSV’s bonded warehouse helps us process unregistered products in Africa which need bonded facilities, and our strong relationships with co-ops and poultry houses ensure the complex nature of reverse logistics and order/product returns works smoothly.