Pet Food Wholesale in Saudi Arabia: What Buyers Should Know

Saudi Arabia splits pet food oversight across two bodies: the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) oversees food safety, labelling, and import/export procedures, including approval for specific novel ingredients or additives, while the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO) sets the underlying technical product standards. Buyers should expect to satisfy both rather than assuming a single-agency process.

SASO's Saber (Saleem) system is an electronic certification and conformity-assessment platform that has been mandatory for all imported goods entering Saudi Arabia since July 2018. Every pet food shipment needs to clear this system before entry — treat Saber registration as a standing compliance step for every consignment, not a one-off setup task.

Saudi Arabia's standard VAT rate is 15%, administered by ZATCA (the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority) — a rate that has held since a July 2020 increase from the original 5% introduced when VAT launched in 2018. Buyers relying on older sourcing documentation should specifically check for this outdated 5% figure, since it's a genuinely common and easy mistake to carry forward. On top of VAT, imports typically face an additional customs duty of around 5%.

Pet food labels sold in Saudi Arabia must be in Arabic — English is optional alongside it, not a substitute — covering ingredients, nutritional analysis, country of origin, and manufacturing/expiry dates. Confirm a manufacturer's Arabic labelling process is handled by someone with genuine Saudi pet food labelling experience.

Jeddah Islamic Port handles roughly 65% of Saudi Arabia's imports and is the country's single most important seaport, with capacity trending past 13 million TEUs following ongoing DP World and Red Sea Gateway Terminal expansions — the natural entry point for a Riyadh- or western-Saudi-focused distribution plan. King Abdulaziz Port in Dammam, on the Arabian Gulf coast, led the country in TEU volume in 2024 at 3.23 million after a SR7 billion investment doubled its capacity to 7.5 million TEUs — the more relevant gateway for buyers targeting the Eastern Province or onward Gulf distribution. Which port matters more depends on where in Saudi Arabia demand is concentrated.

Formulations using novel proteins or less common additives require specific SFDA approval before entry — this isn't a formality for a genuinely novel ingredient, and buyers introducing a functional or premium formulation with newer ingredient technology should build this approval step into their timeline explicitly rather than assuming standard registration covers it.

Buyers building both a UAE and Saudi Arabia presence should treat the two as a single Gulf programme rather than two unrelated launches — Arabic-language labelling requirements, the general shape of a Gulf import-compliance process, and the buyer persona (a growing, young, increasingly urban pet-owning population) are similar enough across both markets that a shared formulation and packaging strategy is usually more efficient than developing each market independently. See our UAE market guide for the parallel detail there. The two regulatory systems and VAT rates are genuinely different (MOCCAE/FTA/5% VAT versus SFDA-SASO/ZATCA/15% VAT), so compliance and pricing still need separate, country-specific verification even when the wider go-to-market strategy is shared.

The most common mistake is citing the outdated 5% VAT figure from Saudi Arabia's 2018 VAT launch instead of the current 15% rate, which meaningfully distorts a margin projection. A second is treating Saber registration as optional or as a one-time step rather than a per-shipment compliance requirement. A third is picking a single port by habit rather than by where actual Saudi demand sits — Jeddah and Dammam serve genuinely different parts of the country.

Candora Petcare coordinates SFDA/SASO compliance guidance, Saber platform registration, Arabic-language labelling, and Jeddah- or Dammam-routed logistics for buyers building a Saudi or wider Gulf pet food wholesale programme.