IQI’s vision for 2024: Looking forward to an exciting year ahead

March 07 2024 - Blog

The year 2023 was one of positive change for IQI Trusted Petfood Ingredients. Last October, IQI joined OSI Group. Its enormous network and capabilities will give IQI the opportunity to become a global leader in the pet food industry and to co-create new solutions together with our suppliers and customers. I therefore look forward to 2024 being another positive year with many developments that will benefit us and our partners in the pet food industry. 

OSI chose to invest in IQI because of our strategic plan to work closely together with our partners and suppliers to innovate the pet food industry. OSI enables us to further build upon this and expand our team to develop more long-term opportunities within our existing strategy. By investing in IQI, OSI has taken a strategic decision to move into pet food. Human food and pet food are closely related, but the opportunities created by combining these two worlds are still to be fully exploited. 

Exploring possibilities 

The acquisition enables us to leverage OSI’s extensive supply chain network to reach new customers, broaden our product portfolio, and develop additional supply relationships. There are many innovative raw materials and side streams in human food, either from our current suppliers or from OSI’s supply chain network, which could have interesting applications in pet food. In the coming year, we will look into what kind of ingredients OSI has available and which of those are suitable for IQI. This will enable us to create unique, innovative, premium animal protein and plant-based ingredients for pet food. 

Broadening our portfolio

Together, OSI and IQI can operate as a big global partner. OSI’s portfolio includes many ingredients with the highest animal welfare standard, organically produced, or with a small carbon footprint. Not all side streams of production are, however, fully validated. To fully validate these ingredients, we will need to set up processing with a third party in a co-creation process involving them, IQI and OSI. This will enable us to expand our activities from being a supplier to also becoming a producer of pet food ingredients. 

Strengthening our supply chains

Together with OSI, we will also further strengthen our supply chains to avoid dependency on a specific country or region. Different solutions can be found through OSI’s wider network. This may be related to finding other sources for the same ingredients or creating supply chain solutions. Besides reliable sourcing, we also need to ensure a sufficiently large market. Our partnership with OSI enables us to expand our business into other regions, like Oceania, and find the best market fit for our innovative ingredients. 

Solution-based working

The people at OSI are driven by providing any kind of solution that is needed for their customers. This way of working is very inspirational to us at IQI and closely relates to how we develop solutions for our suppliers and customers within pet food. In the coming period, we will further strengthen our focus on creating holistic solutions that encompass all aspects of a reliable supply chain; from logistics and warehousing to processing ingredients to customer specifications. We can also tap into OSI’s capabilities to create warehousing solutions in Australia, for example, and other parts of the world. 

Co-creation

Co-creation and co-development will continue to be a strong focal point for IQI. A recent example of a successful co-creation process is the partnership between IQI, OSI and Boneselect Sp. z o.o from Poland. This partnership enables us to maximize the potential of Boneselect’s beef side streams and ensure the highest quality beef protein hydrolysate for pet food applications. Beef protein hydrolysate, or dried beef, is a rich source of pure beef with high protein and low ash content. 

Sustainability

Besides the more traditional animal-based ingredients, we will also continue to broaden our portfolio with new and sustainable plant-based, fish, and marine ingredients. Ingredients like Protéger™, AlgaPrime™ DHA, or insect proteins will continue to be highly relevant and offer growth opportunities in the coming years. We see a lot of interest with many projects and business opportunities. 

Strong strategy

All of these developments together will ensure a very interesting year ahead with many opportunities thanks to OSI’s investment in IQI. Our mutual solution-oriented and technically strong approach is an excellent fit and strengthens IQI’s strategy. I would be most interested to hear from you if you would like to discuss the possibilities of this development for your business.