Mexico Cat Food Market to Reach USD 1,177.7 Million by 2033 as Bulk Kibble Converts to Branded Bags

Mexico’s cat food market will grow from USD 715.0 million in 2026 to USD 1,177.7 million by 2033 at a compound annual rate of 7.39 per cent, according to a new Pheonix Research report published today. Tonnage rises from 246,000 tonnes to 359,993 tonnes at 5.59 per cent, and the difference between the two rates — value per tonne climbing from USD 2,907 to USD 3,271 — is where the strategic content sits.

The forecast rests on a measurement finding that is unusual for a category this closely tracked. Mexico’s retail panels log about MXN 5,000 million of cat food in the twelve months to June 2026 against a modelled market of MXN 13.2 billion — just under 38 per cent. The remainder moves through the forrajería trade, where a twenty-kilogram sack is opened at the counter and kibble is weighed out into a plastic bag, and through traditional channels that no scanner reaches. Neither the panel figure nor the modelled figure is wrong; they measure different halves of the same market.

Pheonix Research identifies the migration of that bulk trade into branded packaging as the mechanism behind the forecast. The forrajería channel holds roughly 30 per cent of the market by volume, and each percentage point of it that converts is worth about USD 7.2 million in year one on the 2026 base. The consequence for suppliers is that the growth does not require a new customer: it requires a customer who already buys cat food to buy it in a bag.

Mexico City carries the geography. The capital holds 1,784,601 cats, more than any other federal entity ahead of the State of Mexico (1,582,120), Jalisco (1,096,784), Veracruz (1,013,455) and Nuevo León (849,103), and accounts for 13.7 per cent of national market value on 8.8 per cent of the cats. It is the only large entity where cats approach parity with dogs, at 0.66 cats per dog against 0.25 in the State of Mexico, and its density of 1,194 cats per square kilometre is 16.8 times that of the adjacent State of Mexico. The same city has the country’s lowest pet-ownership rate — 56.0 per cent of dwellings against 73.0 per cent in Hidalgo and Tlaxcala — which is not a contradiction but the point: dense, small, time-poor households take cats, and take the accessories that go with an indoor animal.

Mix, not mouths, carries the value. Wet food is about 25 per cent of value today, grows at 10.75 per cent against dry’s 6.03 per cent and reaches 31 per cent by 2033. Online moves from 11 per cent to 20 per cent at 16.96 per cent, for the physical reason that a ten-kilogram sack is heavy. Both shifts pull the adjacent cat litter category, the highest-frequency repeat purchase in the basket.

Two plants have already underwritten the conversion. Mars operates what it describes as the largest of its pet food plants worldwide at Querétaro — 522,000 tonnes, fourteen new lines and MXN 3,500 million invested over three years — and Nestlé Purina has committed USD 220 million at Silao for a third wet line and a fourth dry line. Together those two sites come to about 62.6 per cent of CONAFAB’s 1,370,000-tonne estimate of national production. ADM’s Minino holds 28 per cent of dry by volume and 29 per cent by value, growing at 12 per cent without a plant of that scale, which makes it the third route into the same shift.

The report bases its animal count on INEGI’s ENBIARE 2025 survey of 19.2 million cats and tests it against tonnage: 246,000 tonnes across that population implies 12.81 kilograms per cat a year, roughly 35 grams a day, consistent with a partially packaged diet. The lower peer-reviewed extrapolation of 7,346,925 cats would imply 33.48 kilograms a year, or 92 grams a day, which exceeds what a domestic cat eats. Pheonix Research states the corroboration as an inference and reports it as such.

The full analysis, including the regional breakdown, the channel economics and the competitive landscape, is published in Mexico Cat Food Market Size, Share and Forecast 2026–2033. The editorial treatment of the measurement gap — why a market can be twice the size of the panels that track it — is published as Mexico’s Cat Food Market Is Twice the Size of the Market That Measures It.

About Pheonix Research. Pheonix Research publishes market intelligence built from primary operational evidence — production data, trade records, filings and channel economics — rather than from panel data alone, and states the assumptions behind every forecast it issues.