Animal feed protein ingredients projected to reach $17.8 billion by 2032

Animal feed is now the fastest-growing customer for protein ingredients, and the people buying for it are changing how they buy. In a plant-based feed ingredients report updated November 5, IndexBox says the market heads into 2026 on a wider demand base, with buyers purchasing in a more disciplined way and supply drawn from a more regionally diversified set of sources. Plant-derived ingredients still form the core of commercial animal feed. Soybean meal, canola meal, sunflower meal, pulses and by-product streams deliver protein, energy, fiber and functional nutrients.

IndexBox points to two forces behind the expansion through 2035. One is growth in livestock production. The other is the search for feed formulations that are more diversified and resilient. Among the demand supports it lists is rising protein consumption in emerging economies. Put plainly, more animals need feeding, and buyers want more than one way to fill the protein line in a ration.

For a feed mill purchasing director or an integrator's nutrition team, the useful question is whether that shift holds up beyond one firm's outlook. Other research firms' forecasts point the same way, though each measures something slightly different.

Feed grows faster than food

A separate forecast puts a number on that demand. Research and Markets values the global protein ingredients market at $42.3 billion in 2025 and projects $65 billion by 2032. Food and beverages is the largest application today, at $15.5 billion. Animal feed ranks second but grows fastest, reaching a projected $17.8 billion by 2032 as livestock and aquaculture diets use more protein-rich ingredients.

That makes the feed trough the fastest-growing customer for protein ingredients through 2032, at 7.5% a year against 6.3% for the market overall.

The drivers explain the gap. The release, a paid announcement distributed through GlobeNewswire on October 23, ties the overall market's growth to consumer focus on health and wellness, protein-fortified foods and beverages, sports nutrition and specialized nutritional products. Feed's growth comes from a different place: greater use of protein-rich ingredients in livestock and aquaculture nutrition. That suggests feed demand follows ration formulation and animal output more than grocery-aisle trends, which fits the livestock production growth IndexBox puts at the center of its outlook.

Speed is not size, though. Animal protein still generated the most revenue, $28 billion in 2025, and whey alone made up 45.7% of it. Whey is forecast to reach $20.3 billion by 2032, more than the feed application's projected $17.8 billion. The two figures slice the same market differently, one by protein type and one by end use, so they can overlap and shouldn't be read as rival totals. Infant formulation, pharmaceuticals and personal care and cosmetics round out the specialized applications.

Pea protein is the standout in the chart. At 8.1% a year, it has the highest growth rate of any plant protein sub-type, and plant protein as a category, at 7.1%, outpaces the overall market. Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region and is projected to reach $18.7 billion by 2032, which broadly fits IndexBox's focus on protein consumption in emerging economies.

Research and Markets puts Asia-Pacific's growth at 7.9% a year, driven by urbanization, changing dietary preferences, more spending on health and nutrition and demand for protein-fortified and plant-based products. Those are mostly consumer-side drivers. The regional number therefore says more about what people eat than about what goes into livestock rations, so its agreement with IndexBox is about direction rather than mechanism.

Soy sits on both sides of the ledger

Feed demand and food demand meet in soy. IndexBox names soybean meal first among feed staples. Research and Markets puts soy protein at 60% of plant protein ingredient revenue in 2025 and projects it will reach $14.1 billion by 2032. The products are different, meal for rations and concentrates for food, but both come from the same crop.

Soy isn't coasting on its size, either. Wheat protein ranks a distant second in plant protein revenue, and soy comes right after pea in the sub-type growth ranking, ahead of whey. The largest plant protein is also one of the faster-growing ones, so demand for soy protein ingredients is expanding from an already dominant position.

Future Market Insights offers a reason why soy and pulses keep winning on the food side. Its alternative protein outlook estimates that plant-based pulse and oilseed sources hold 68% of 2026 demand. FMI puts this down to cost. Commercial mills that use wet fractionation and solvent extraction turn out bulk isolates for a small share of what cultivated or precision-fermentation protein costs. FMI says industrial soy crushing and yellow-pea fractionation deliver scalable cost-in-use.

Peas are the fastest-growing plant protein in the Research and Markets data, and IndexBox already counts pulses among the plant ingredients feed relies on.

Food processors are going after that pea growth with new grades. According to FMI, Roquette Frères launched NUTRALYS Pea 850F in February 2026, having seen a 29% rise in food and beverage launches with protein and weight-management claims. FMI projects 10.6% annual growth for pea protein in plant-based meat. It says soluble isolates are already moving into dairy-free yogurts, sports bars and sparkling protein beverages. If that spread continues, feed formulators who rely on pulses could end up sharing the crop with more food buyers who want the protein as an isolate.

Something holds that pull back. FMI notes that food manufacturers have to weigh the heavy electricity and steam use of protein extraction and extrusion against what conventional meat costs. That cost falls on the isolate side. The pace of food demand growth for soy and pea isolates would therefore depend partly on whether processors can stay competitive with meat.

Europe grows more of its own protein

Europe offers a concrete example of the regional supply IndexBox describes. The same FMI outlook notes that national agriculture ministries and food-security planners are encouraging domestic pulse farming and new uses for agricultural side-streams, with the stated goal of relying less on imported livestock feed. It cites the European Commission's July 2026 report on the bloc's protein supply, COM(2026) 355 final, which shows production growing after what FMI calls a 53% five-year expansion. The Commission's figures cover 2025-2026.

For an EU compound feed buyer, that suggests domestic pulses add an option at the edges of the supply list rather than a new foundation for it. The policy direction is clear. The tonnage is still building.

Check the scope before the number

The strongest objection to reading too much into these figures is that the forecasts measure different things, so none of their totals can be added to another. Market Research Future's plant-based food ingredients report, updated November 7, treats animal feed as one application among several on its way from $18.68 billion in 2025 to $40.19 billion by 2035, while Fortune Business Insights sizes plant-based protein at $14.88 billion in 2026 and $24.61 billion by 2034, with food and beverages taking about 74%. The Research and Markets feed figure cited earlier isn't broken out between plant-derived and animal protein.

The growth rates spread just as widely. Market Research Future, which estimated its market at $17.31 billion in 2024, puts annual growth at 7.96% through 2035. Starting from $13.97 billion in 2025, Fortune projects 6.50% a year through 2034. FMI's alternative protein market, where plant-based burger patties and sausages are the largest application format at 52%, grows 12.0% a year from $18.8 billion in 2026 to $58.4 billion by 2036. Feed's 7.5% falls inside that range, which says less about feed than about how much the denominator matters.

Units matter as well. Research and Markets builds its forecast in US dollar value terms, with 2022 to 2025 as the historical period and 2025 as the base year, and profiles more than 50 companies. A value forecast can rise with prices as well as tonnage. A buyer setting that 7.5% next to the Commission's tonnes is putting dollars beside physical volume.

North America shows why scope matters. Research and Markets says North America accounted for 34% of global protein ingredients revenue in 2025. Fortune Business Insights gives North America a 34% revenue share of the global plant based protein market in 2025. Because the two reports measure different markets, the matching figure is worth checking before anyone reads it as confirmation, and neither report shows whether that share has held steady over time.

The rest of Fortune's regional split shows how tight the plant protein race is, with Asia-Pacific at 30% and Europe at 29%. Across all protein ingredients, Research and Markets ranks Europe second behind North America, and Market Research Future also names North America the largest market and Asia-Pacific the fastest-growing. The regional ordering holds across reports even where the scopes differ, which is a more dependable signal than any single share.

Two signals would confirm or weaken this read. If the Commission's next protein report shows protein-rich crops and pulses still growing, IndexBox's case for more regional supply has real tonnage behind it. If feed's growth rate falls back toward the market average in the next round of forecasts, the demand case gets weaker. The buying discipline IndexBox describes would then look more like caution than a lasting change.