News
14/02/23 Passion for Animals welcomes France.
A new wholesaler in live animals for France.
We've been talking about this moment for a long time and now it has finally arrived. Passion for Animals crosses the border. It has been several years now that we have noticed that the demand for live animals from France is high. French stores, and certainly those near the border, look for quality suppliers from neighbouring countries, such as Belgium. As such, for a while now we have been regularly receiving requests from France to deliver animals there as well.
How is this practicaly organised?
Geographically, France is of course a large country. The border areas are not that far away, but the south of France is quite a distance. In a first phase, we therefore decided to limit ourselves geographically to the north of France. In concrete terms, we will start supplying the following arrondissements: 62, 59, 80, 02, 60, 76, 27, 77, 08, 51, 55, 54, 57, 67, 91, 78, 92, 93, 75, 94, 95. If your store is not located in one of these areas, do not hesitate to contact us anyway, we will examine how we can best assist you and who knows, we may drive a little further, especially for you!
Naturally, this endeavour poses a major logistical challenge. We prefer to deliver animals with our own transport, but is that feasible given the greater distances? We can affirm this wholeheartedly and with conviction. Our vans are equipped with the correct ventilation and cooling/heating equipment to guarantee conditioned transport regardless of the distance travelled. Live trackers continuously send the location and temperature in the vans to our control centre, so that action can be taken if something goes wrong along the way. The permits were also changed to Type2 transport permits that allow us to transport the animals correctly.
By delivering with our own transport, we can significantly shorten the delivery times for the animals, which of course only benefits the welfare of the animals in transit. It is true that it is a bit of a drive before the first customer is reached, but once that distance has been covered, deliveries can be made quickly and all animals never spend more than 12 hours on the road, which is virtually impossible with external transport. Equipped with the correct documents for international transport, we are therefore completely ready to introduce foreign shops to our strengths.
Want to find out more? Do not hesitate to contact us or register on our registration page right now.
14/10/22 Price increase red mosquito larvae
It has been in the air for a while, red mosquito larvae are becoming a scarce product, but how come?
Worldwide there are a number of important production sites of high-quality live red mosquito larvae. These are located in China, the United States and Ukraine. There are still a number of alternative production sites, but they cannot guarantee the required volumes or quality required to produce frozen bloodworms for the existing markets.
Ukraine has always played an important role for the European market, but given the local war, this large production has completely ceased to be. As a result, red mosquito larvae suddenly became a scarce product due to the war. Production units of the different brands suddenly had to resort to other locations, often further away, resulting in higher production and transport costs.
With our competitors we have seen for some time that the red mosquito larvae have risen sharply in price. However, Ocean Nutrition has been able to maintain its prices for a long time. This was due to sufficiently large stocks to be able to absorb fluctuations in the market. Unfortunately, the war continues and Ocean Nutrition is now also forced to move their production to new production locations. This worldwide high demand and higher transport costs translate into a huge price increase that you can currently also observe in our webshop. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done about it.
The good news is that the white mosquito larvae, black mosquito larvae and brine shrimp had other production sites before the war in Ukraine and will therefore not be affected. A price shift is therefore not expected for these products, as is currently happening for the red mosquito larvae.
If these changes bring up any questions and/or ambiguities, do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to help you.
Natural products
Recently, Millamore products have been added to our product range. These products include bedding materials, nesting materials and toys for rodents, rabbits, birds and reptiles based on aspen wood. Aspen wood as a bedding is not that innovative in itself within the pet sector, but what makes Millamore bedding so unique is its production process.
Millamore's story begins with the harvesting of the trees. The trees used by the Estonian company Tapveï are harvested with respect for nature, according to the most recent and current FSC forest stewardship practices. The company works under strict ISO standards and only with locally harvested trees. As a company, we consider nature very important and therefore find it essential that the wood needed for the manufacturing of these products is harvested with respect for nature. This sparked our attention to take a closer look at Millamore's products.
We have established that Millamore respects nature, but apart from that, the quality of the materials themselves is also very important. In this respect, too, Millamore goes a step further than common natural bedding producers. They hold a number of parameters in high regard which we will discuss in more detail below:
Dust-free
You often see “dust-free” on packaging, but what does that actually mean? 100% dust-free does not really exist with natural bedding products. This label can often be found on traditional natural bedding products and it turns out that up to 15% dust is still present in the finished product. This is absolutely not the case with Millamore. After various laboratory analyses it was found that Millamore's finished products contain only 0.1% - 0.7% dust. This is invariably the lowest dust percentage of all natural bedding products on the market.
Very high absorbency and good odour absorption
Due to the unique drying process developed by the company behind the Millamore bedding, this bedding has a very high absorbency. In addition, the bedding was also found to have a 3x higher ammonia binding capacity than other available bedding materials. This immediately results in less unpleasant odours for us as caretakers, but also for the animals themselves these unhealthy compounds are better filtered out of the ambient air. The cage will also remain drier due to the high absorption capacity of the bedding. In short, it is a perfect choice for your pet.
Laboratory tested
In laboratory research, no germs could be cultivated from the Millamore bedding. This has to do with the heating process during the drying of the bedding, which kills all micro-organisms present in the wood. Millamore, however, did not stop there. The bedding was also checked for more than 200 elements, compounds, chemicals and pesticides and none of these 200 tested substances were found. The standards that Tapveï, Millamore's producer, imposes on themselves for their bedding and nesting materials, correspond to the requirements used for nutrition. Choosing Millamore is therefore not only good for the health of your small pet, but it is also an extremely safe choice to give it the home it deserves.
100% natural and compostable
We prefer to discuss the last two qualities that make Millamore bedding so unique as one item. After all, it is a 100% natural product, as we have already mentioned above, and this indirectly implies that it is also fully compostable, which in turn is better for the environment.
Conclusion
As you can read here, Millamore is an extremely safe, and extremely healthy choice for your pet. No artificially produced pellets that create a lot of waste, no natural products that can harm the health of your animal, but a dust-free, absorbent, odour reducing, laboratory tested natural bedding that is good for the environment and good for your pet. Millamore's products have us convinced. If that is not yet the case for you, send us an email for a free sample and pay close attention to our transport containers, because from now on we will also be using Millamore for packaging.
Millamore, for a happy pet!
A passion for animals...
During the corona crisis of 2020 and a large part of 2021, a lot of animals were sold as many people sought out the warmth and comfort of a new pet. Unfortunately, once the crisis neared its end, many pets were dumped or abandoned. A situation of which we, as a wholesaler, cannot approve. We are often singled out as the cause of our society viewing pets as consumer goods, but nothing could be further from the truth. Our company is not called Passion for Animals for no reason. Animal welfare is therefore very important to us, but we also want to go a step further.
Many of the animals we sell end up dumped or abandoned and we deeply regret that. The big question which arose was: how can we help combat this situation? Many shelters told us to just stop selling animals, but is that really the solution? The animals will be bought elsewhere, often for much lower prices, which in our opinion only reinforces the "disposable" aspect, because, after all, it is "only 10 €" left behind... That is why we chose to go further.
We changed our health booklets to include the fact that an animal is a purchase made for life, and not for as long as it suits you. Even if for some reason it gets a little more difficult, you are and will remain responsible for the pet you chose. In addition to this informative message, we also wished to make a financial contribution. It was not easy to find someone who would listen to our story without pointing to us as the cause of the neglected animals, but in the end we did find a partner: the Belgian bird and wild animal shelters. These people are often called in to take in and shelter abandoned or neglected animals. This means that they too have to bear the financial costs associated with this, often with limited government support. That is why we entered into a commitment that for every rodent or rabbit with a health booklet sold, we would make a contribution to Belgian bird and wild animal shelters. This project has been running successfully since February 2021. We have already been able to contribute a nice amount and hope, in addition to raising awareness with the general public, to support the people who work every day to take care of neglected and abandoned animals, as we owe them a debt of gratitude.
Our cooperation is also highlighted on their website. You can find out more via this link.
And a passion for nature...
There is no denying that companies like Passion for Animals has a fairly large ecological footprint. Aquariums have to be heated, fish arrive by plane, vans drive back and forth to deliver animals or to take them to pet stores. The impact is often greater than one would think. This also concerns Passion for Animals. Step by step we try to find solutions to lessen our company's ecological impact. At the beginning of this year, our vans were replaced by vans with an AdBlue tank in addition to diesel, mainly to limit the emission of harmful greenhouse gases. We realize, better than anyone, that this is just a first step in the right direction and that there is still a long way to go.
At the same time as the above-mentioned project "a passion for animals" we decided, in addition to donating to the bird and wild animal shelters, to also make a contribution for each rodent sold with a certificate which consists of planting trees under the sub-project "and a passion for nature". The purpose of these trees is to offset some of the greenhouse gases we produce and to reduce our ecological footprint. We realize, of course, that removing the source of these greenhouse gases is a more important step, but by means of this compensation we try to have a first short-term impact and at least already compensate our ecological footprint on nature. We remain permanently committed to our company "going green", but also continue to plant trees in a first step towards a more beautiful world.
Meanwhile, our "forest" is already taking shape quite nicely. You can always find a current update (every quarter we plant new trees) via this link.
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