10x Price Difference: Why Cat Freeze-Dried Treats Vary

After searching online, I've found two types of freezedried products available for purchase:

 A 500gram bucket of chicken freezedried meat, priced at 44 yuan for 500 grams, which equals to 88 yuan per kilogram.

 A 70gram package of chicken breast freezedried meat, costing 59 yuan for 70 grams, translating to 842 yuan per kilogram.

Why can the prices of freezedried products vary by a factor of 10?

It all boils down to the quality of the ingredients.

Raw meat typically contains 75% to 80% water content, whereas highquality pure meat freezedried products have a water content of less than 5%. This means that approximately 4 to 5 pounds of fresh meat is needed to produce just 1 pound of freezedried meat.

Let's take the cost of chicken breast ingredients as an example:

Branded chicken: 13,000 yuan per ton

Standard chicken: 10,000 yuan per ton

Lowerquality chicken: 7,000 yuan per ton, and sometimes even less

Based on the cost of the ingredients, the cost of pure chicken breast freezedried products is as follows:

Branded chicken breast freezedried: 52 to 65 yuan per kilogram

Standard chicken breast freezedried: 40 to 50 yuan per kilogram

Lowerquality chicken breast freezedried: 28 to 35 yuan per kilogram

Therefore, the quality of the ingredients can result in a cost difference of over a factor of 1 for the final freezedried product.

Some lowend freezedried products may add starch to the meat pieces to reduce costs, as revealed by freezedrying factories.

Production Process

Highquality freezedried products require drying in a vacuum and lowtemperature environment (between 30 to 40 degrees Celsius) and typically take about 3 days to complete. The electricity costs and equipment wear and tear, when spread out, amount to about 30 yuan per kilogram.

Most factories cannot meet the standard of vacuum drying, and some can only achieve temperatures as low as 20 degrees Celsius. Inadequate vacuum and insufficiently low temperatures, as well as insufficient drying time, can lead to a higher water content in the freezedried product, making it more prone to spoilage. Therefore, many factories will directly dry the ingredients at 80 degrees Celsius, which can make the ingredients look waxlike and destroy their overall color, shape, and aroma.

Irradiation Sterilization

Freezedrying can only dehydrate the product in a frozen environment and cannot sterilize it. Therefore, irradiation sterilization is required after the product is packaged. The vast majority of freezedrying factories do not have irradiation equipment, primarily because the equipment is expensive and requires specific qualifications.

As a result, factories usually entrust thirdparty companies for irradiation sterilization. The general specifications for freezedried irradiation are 4K, 5K, and 6K. The higher the irradiation dose, the more thorough the sterilization, but the lower the palatability and the greater the loss of vitamins and other nutrients.

Storage and Logistics

For ecommerce platforms, the cost of shipping accounts for a significant portion of the expenses, with many ecommerce companies jokingly saying they are working for the shipping companies. Additionally, storage and packaging labor costs add up to a considerable expense.

Branding and Distributors

For regular brands, the costs of branding and promotion, employee salaries, and distributor channel fees all contribute to pushing up the costs several notches higher.

Summary

1. The raw materials and electricity costs of freezedrying are the most direct costs. Highquality ingredients and genuine freezedrying technology result in a final product priced around 90 yuan per kilogram. It is not recommended to purchase freezedried products below this price point.

2. Freezedrying technology can only dry the product and cannot truly sterilize it. Therefore, it is advisable to purchase individually packaged and sealed freezedried products, rather than those in mixed or transparent packaging.

3. If the freezedried product has a yellowish color and its shape is shriveled, it may have been dried using heat rather than freezedrying.