Pet Care: Australia Has More Pets Than People | The Decade Ahead

**Bryce** (0:00)
There are now more pets in Australia than there are people, and we are spending big dollars on them each year. It's a sector that is growing faster than almost any consumer category. In today's episode, we're breaking down the pet economy, where the money's going, and how you can invest in it.
Welcome to The Decade Ahead, a 10-part series on Equity Mates where we're exploring 10 themes that we think are set up for the next decade. My name's Bryce.

**Ren** (0:26)
And I'm Ren, and today we are talking about the theme of pet care. It might not be the first thing you think when we're talking about future industries and the decade ahead, but the numbers are pretty astounding as we'll get to in this episode.

**Bryce** (0:40)
The Decade Ahead is brought to you by ANZ Business Start Right. Starting a business comes with a lot of what-ifs. ANZ is here to help you with what's next.

**Ren** (0:49)
Thanks to ANZ for helping us keep all of our content free and accessible. Bryce, let's talk about an industry that is certainly not free, it is taking a bigger share of wallet, and that is pets.

**Bryce** (1:00)
Yeah.

**Ren** (1:00)
This is one that's quite close to your heart.
You're a dinkwad. What? Have you heard of that?

**Bryce** (1:08)
Pardon you.

**Ren** (1:09)
Never heard of that. So jumping ahead, have you heard of dinks before?

**Bryce** (1:15)
Yeah, dual income, no kids.

**Ren** (1:16)
Yeah. So dinkwads is the new phrase, double income, no kids, with our dog.

**Bryce** (1:23)
With a dog?

**Ren** (1:24)
Yeah.

**Bryce** (1:27)
That is me.

**Ren** (1:28)
Yeah, that is you. So we'll be asking for some personal anecdotes as we go. Maybe we'll flash up some images of Bryce's dog. Maybe we'll put that on the YouTube thumbnail to improve our click-through rate.

**Bryce** (1:39)
That'll be big.

**Ren** (1:40)
But let's start with just how many pets there are in Australia. Because there's heaps of pets. Pets have done well over the years. So Australia's population sits at just shy of 28 million, 27.7 million, according to the Bureau of Statistics late last year.
The pet population, 31.6 million.

**Bryce** (2:02)
That's nuts.

**Ren** (2:03)
And more than that, it's growing faster than the human population.

**Bryce** (2:05)
Yeah, growing at 10% over the last three years alone. In the same period, the human population has grown only 6.5%.
So outstripping population. Notably as well, it's been growing very quickly since COVID.

**Ren** (2:20)
Yeah, since COVID.

**Bryce** (2:22)
COVID dogs.

**Ren** (2:24)
Just before COVID, 61% of Australian households owned a pet. By 2022, it was up to 69%.
So 8 percentage points in a couple of years. Now it is 73% of Australian households own a pet. It's huge. When did you guys get Penny?

**Bryce** (2:40)
Well, we only got Penny at the end of 2025

**Ren** (2:43)
Yeah, so not quite the COVID dog boom. No. But this is why this is a theme that we're talking about today, because there is more Australians, and then as a percentage more and more of those Australians are owning pets. And most importantly, spend per pet is massively increasing. SPP. Yes, SPP.
And we'll talk about that. So if there's more pets and we're spending more on pets, that aggregates to a much larger industry. And to give you some sense of where we are now and where we expect to be by 2035, it's pretty nuts. The size of the industry does differ depending on what you include and what you don't include. But in 2025, the global pet care market broadly defined sat between 240 billion and 280 billion US dollars.
By 2035, that is expected to reach 570 billion globally.

**Bryce** (3:41)
So we're doubling in the next decade. The number speaks for himself. But that's compounding at about 6% to 7% CAGR over the next 10 years.

**Ren** (3:50)
Now we've got a bit of a game here. Guess the pet.

**Bryce** (3:54)
You can show me a picture and I'll be like, dog.

**Ren** (3:58)
We're all about the basics here at Equity Mates. So we said 31.6 million pets in Australia.
I've got the six most common pet types, and I want you to rank them from most popular to least popular in terms of numbers of pets.

**Bryce** (4:13)
Okay. Shear numbers.

**Ren** (4:14)
Shear numbers. Not like most loved. So the six categories are dogs, cats, fish, birds, small mammals. So I think you're guinea pigs, etc.
And then reptiles.

**Bryce** (4:27)
Okay.
I'm just going to say reptiles and mammals. The reptiles and mammals will share the bottom. The bottom too.