Our solutions for Pet Food
In a market increasingly driven by the growing demand for premium and tailored nutrition, formulating high-quality pet food has become a strategic priority.
At Roquette, we support you with a wide range of plant-based ingredients designed to meet the specific nutritional needs of companion animals.
Meeting the Demands of the Pet Food Market
The veterinary community recognizes that pets are living longer and healthier lives thanks to advances in nutrition. Today’s pet owners expect more than just basic nourishment. They seek diets that support digestive comfort, immune resilience, and overall vitality through carefully selected, functional ingredients. This shift has led to a rising demand for personalized, hypoallergenic, and grain-free formulations.
Whether it’s wet or dry food, or even a simple treat, pet food must be complete, balanced, digestible, palatable, and safe. It should include the right combination of proteins, fibers, and other essential nutrients to meet the high expectations of today’s discerning pet owners.
To meet these formulation challenges, Roquette draws on its extensive knowledge and experience in plant-based nutrition to offer a diverse range of high-performing ingredients tailored to the evolving needs of the pet food industry.
Our Proteins
High-quality plant-based solutions for companion animal nutrition.
Proteins are essential nutrients for the proper nutrition of all animals. Playing a key role in their diet for their overall health and development. Sources of proteins are many and varied, with considerable opportunities for further diversification and substitutions, which make their choice critical.
We offer a diverse range of high-quality protein sources derived from maize, wheat, potatoes, and peas. Thanks to a wet milling process, all of them are naturally low in ash, fiber, and oligosaccharides. This low-ash profile makes proteins act as a urine acidifier, particularly beneficial for cats. They are also dried carefully to maintain their high digestibility and functionality.
The benefits of our proteins in Pet Food :
- Rich in protein and essential amino acids
- Low in ash and non-starch polysaccharides
- Highly digestible and well-tolerated
- Free from anti-nutritional factors
- Excellent taste and texture
Some of our proteins combine both nutritional and functional benefits, offering new opportunities for formulation optimization and innovation in animal nutrition.
Our Texturizing Solutions for Pet Food
We offer a comprehensive range of functional ingredients, designed to enhance texture in pet food formulations—whether dry, wet, or high-moisture.
- Functional Proteins for Texture Support
Roquette’s vegetal functional proteins can also provide excellent texturizing capabilities:
- VITEN® Vital Wheat Gluten, thanks to its network-forming ability during cooking, will enhance the structure of chunks and kibbles, helping reduce waste and improve product integrity.
- LYSAMINE® Pea Protein Isolate, with its gelling and thickening properties, especially post-cooking, serves both as a protein source in dry pet food and a functional ingredient in wet formulations. Additionally, pea protein also offers emulsifying benefits.
After extrusion, both VITEN® and LYSAMINE® can become excellent Texturized Vegetable Proteins, ideal for use in meat analogue applications.
- Texture Enhancement with Starches
We provide a wide selection of food-grade native and modified starches to support various textural needs. Native starches contribute to the texture of kibbles and meat loaves, while modified starches enhance the texture and glossiness of sauces, gravies, and meat mixtures. The most used in petfood are:
- Native starches
- Cook-up starches: CLEARAM®
- Precooked starches: PREGEFLO®
- Emulsified starches: CLEARGUM®
- Fibers: Multi-Functional and Clean Label
Roquette’s fibers, whether soluble or insoluble, naturally improve texture. Their liquid-holding capacity and ability to influence viscosity, especially in soluble forms, make them valuable clean-label ingredients. For instance, a fiber with a friendly-labelling derived from the yellow pea – the Internal Pea fiber I50M – has proven to be a valuable binder in wet pet food.
- Polyols: Plant-Based Humectants
Our range of polyols, such as the NEOSORB® sorbitol range, help maintain texture and stability in high-moisture pet food. They are particularly well-suited as an example for soft-texture treats.
- Sugar-Based Texturizers
Roquette’s range of glucose syrups act as viscosifiers or binders, helping to reduce water activity and improve product consistency.
Our Health Benefits Solutions
We offer a range of ingredients that support pet health through targeted nutritional benefits.
For skin and coat condition, maize oil and maize germs provide Omega-6 fatty acids and natural Vitamin E, while our investment in Omega-3-rich microalgae offers a sustainable alternative to fish oil.
To promote eye health and immunity, maize gluten is a natural source of carotenoids (mainly lutein and zeaxanthin) and our chlorella microalgae, rich in lutein, has shown positive effects on immune support.
Fibers also play a key role: soluble and fermentable fibers act as prebiotics for gut health, while non-fermentable fibers improve stool quality and help manage calorie intake. Roquette’s fiber range includes NUTRIOSE® soluble fiber, internal pea fiber for wet food, potato fiber for dry food, COREX® maize and MILUREX® wheat fibers for stool quality, and pea hulls for low-calorie diets.
Hypoallergenic and Grain-Free Pet Food solutions
Hypoallergenic diets are designed to eliminate ingredients that trigger allergic reactions in pets. We offer a range of ingredients tailored to meet the needs of this growing market.
Through our purification process, starches are refined to remove proteins and fiber, which are key components often responsible for allergic responses. As the allergenic potential lies in the protein, Roquette’s maize and wheat starches are safe and suitable for hypoallergenic formulations.
Additionally, our pea and potato-based ingredients provide many alternatives for creating grain-free and soy-free recipes, supporting both dietary sensitivity and consumer preference.
Our Sugar-based Ingredients:
Acting as palatants and coloring agents.
Beyond their sweetening properties, sugar-based ingredients play a key role in enhancing the visual and sensory appeal of pet food. Dextrose, when combined with proteins during cooking, naturally contributes to a caramelized color in kibbles through the Maillard reaction. Maltodextrins can also be used to create shiny coatings, adding visual appeal and improving product presentation.