How global animal health trends are reshaping what manufacturers need to do
What happens if your manufacturing strategy can’t keep up with global change?
In this episode of The Animal Health Show by s8 Recruitment, we explore the key trends reshaping animal health, from rising demand and pet humanization to AI and regulation and what they mean for manufacturers.
SHOW NOTES
TRANSCRIPT
* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio
Right now, we are seeing changes in the world, including in manufacturing, happening at a rocket speed. It’s not just one trend, it’s several major forces hitting at once. And if manufacturers aren’t paying attention. They’re gonna be caught today. I wanna walk through what I see as big global trends reshaping the animal health manufacturing, and more importantly, what that actually means for companies and how they need to operate and who they need to hire.
Because the world is changing at a rapid pace and you don’t want your business to be left behind.
Welcome to the Animal Health Show by S eight. I’m your host, Shannon Wood, and this is where we talk about the latest trends shaping the animal health industry. We’ll be sitting down with leading voices from across the sector, sharing practical insights to help you grow your animal health business, build a stronger team or land your dream role. If you are looking for your next dream job or you are ready to hire your next standout team member, reach out to us at S eight Expert Recruitment Solutions. You’ll find our contact details in the show notes for today’s episode. Alright, let’s talk animal health.
Let’s start with the big picture. The global animal health has been consistently growing. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. When you look at companion animals, aquaculture, and agriculture, there are a few things driving this.
First, more people are eating meat globally as middle classes grow in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. So does the demand for meat, dairy, eggs, and fish. That puts pressure on livestock production, which puts pressure on animal health products, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, and the supply chain. Second, and this is huge, is pet humanization.
Pet owners are spending more on preventative care, on premium pet foods, and on treatments such as chemotherapy. That would’ve seemed overkill for anyone except super rich a decade ago. That’s driving demand in companion animal health product development. Third would be antibiotic resistance.
AMR is genuine global animal health crisis, and the animal health industry is right in the middle of it. We’ve got regulatory bodies around the world, a tightening restrictions on antibiotic use in food, animals. That’s forcing manufacturers to innovate, changing whole pipelines. And then there’s the fourth driver, climate and geography. Changing weather patterns are moving diseases quickly, and globalization means that diseases can spread rapidly. We are also at a time of recording, having a global energy crisis due to the war in Iran, and also navigating rapidly shifting developments in AI. So what does that mean for manufacturers?
Speed is the first thing. Product development cycles need to compress. The window of competitive advantage is shrinking. If you are still running lengthy development timelines and everything, you’ll lose to companies that are faster. And I’m not talking about cutting corners, obviously not. But how you structure projects, how you run trials, how quickly you move through regulatory submissions and connected to that, you can’t just bolt on regulatory affairs into the end development anymore.
Regulatory strategy has to be built in from day one, and as manufacturers try to expand, they need people who understand the local nuances of these industry markets. Third, managing costs without sacrificing quality. This is where the energy crisis bites hardest. Manufacturers are under pressure to be more operationally efficient, to look at their energy use. So to challenge legacy ways of doing things that made sense when energy was cheap.
Now, that requires leadership who are commercially sharp, not just technically strong. Then comes data and AI capability. Precision livestock farming is generating enormous amounts of data. The manufacturers who know how to use that data have a real edge. So the challenge is that this requires people who can bridge the science and the technology and the people are not easy to find.
You also need to be looking at supply chain resilience. We all learned the hard lessons from COVID, like single source suppliers, long international supply chains. Just in time, everything. It was efficient until it wasn’t. So manufacturers now need to build more regional capability and it requires people who know how to build, manage complex supply chains.
And finally, sustainability. Now, this one gets more airtime in some industries than others, but it’s coming fast for animal health manufacturing. Large customers are asking questions about carbon footprint, water use, animal welfare in supply chains, and in some countries regulatory frameworks are tightening and increasingly talent and especially younger talent cares about working for organizations that are taking this seriously.
Every single trend I’ve described translates into hiring signal. Let’s start with regulatory. The number of manufacturers I talk to who are struggling to find experienced regulatory affairs professionals who understand multiple jurisdictions, it’s a real constraint. The talent pool is small. The experience takes years to build, and demand is outpacing supply.
If you are in this space and you have strong regulatory people look after them. Data and AI capability is the biggest emerging gap. Most animal manufacturers were built on deep science and strong operations. They weren’t built for data analytics and AI development. Finding people who have that manufacturing credibility.
Also understand how to use data tools and AI effectively. That’s a very small pool. There’s also a growing need for what I call commercial technical sort of hybrids. So technical service and field-based scientific roles are evolving. Fast manufacturers need people who can have like sophisticated conversations with.
Vets producers and key opinion leaders, but who also genuinely understand the product at a deep level. So like pure salespeople aren’t cutting it in specialist markets anymore. The customer experts expect expertise and on operational side companies who are looking for people who can drive efficiency in high cost pressure environment.
While maintaining quality and compliance operations. Leadership in animal health manufacturing used to be about running smooth processes. Now it’s about running a smart process that also cost competitive and sustainable. So if your product is being sold across multiple countries, if your supply chain touches several countries.
If your team is distributed, you need leaders who are comfortable with that level of complexity, who can work across cultures, who understand how to build alignment in organizations that they can’t always physically be a part of. My strongest advice to any manufacturer right now is this, your hiring strategy is lagging indicator of your business strategy.
If you are planning to launch into new markets or scale your data capability or build out your new product line, you can’t start hiring for that three months before you need it. You need to be building capability now ahead of the curve. To wrap up, the animal health industry is a complex ever changing time at the moment, there’s a lot to navigate, but those who are well positioned have huge opportunities available. Thanks for listening. Chat soon. I’m Shannon Wood, the top dog here at S8 Expert Recruitment Solutions.
Thanks so much for tuning in to today’s episode of The Animal Health Show by S eight. If you’ve found the value in this conversation, please share it with your colleague and industry mate or on social media so we can keep the discussions moving across the sector. If you’d like to get in touch, all of our details are in the show notes for today’s episode.
I thank you for listening, and I look forward to chatting with you again in the fortnight.
* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio