By Dominique Temmerman, International Business Developer Funeral by Peleman, Belgium

The numbers are impossible to ignore. The global pet funeral services market reached an estimated USD 1.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to nearly double to USD 3.9 billion by 2033 - growing at a compound annual growth rate of over 8% annually. In Europe alone, the market generated close to USD 600 million in 2024, with an expected CAGR of 11% through 2030. This is not a niche. This is one of the fastest-growing segments in the entire death care industry.

What is driving this growth? The answer is almost universally the same across every market and every study: the humanisation of pets. Across Europe and beyond, dogs, cats, and other companion animals are no longer regarded as property - they are family members. They sleep in our beds, appear in our family portraits, and are mourned with the same depth of feeling as any human loss. When they die, their owners do not want a transaction. They want a farewell that reflects what that animal truly meant.

Cremation dominates and that creates an opportunity

Within the pet funeral sector, cremation has become the dominant service by a significant margin. In 2025, cremation accounted for over 66% of the global pet funeral services market - a share that continues to grow. Private cremation in particular is gaining ground, as pet owners increasingly want their animal's remains returned to them rather than handled communally.

This shift toward private cremation has a direct consequence for the memorial products sector: the urn, the memorial box, the keepsake vessel has never been more central to the customer experience. It is the physical object the family takes home. It is what sits on the mantelpiece, the bookshelf, or the garden wall. And increasingly, pet owners are asking a very simple question when they receive it: does this look like my animal?

Personalisation: the fastest-growing segment in the market

Market research consistently identifies memorial products and personalised services as the fastest-growing category within pet funerals. Pet owners are actively seeking engraved plaques, photo tributes, custom keepsakes, and memorial objects that are uniquely theirs. The generic and the interchangeable are losing ground to the specific and the personal.

At Peleman, we have been working alongside funeral professionals for decades, and we see this shift clearly in our own market. Our response has been to develop a range of sublimated photo plates - full-colour, photorealistic prints in over 150 different shapes - that can be applied directly onto any memorial product: an urn, a wooden box, a display panel, a garden stone. The photo plate does not replace the memorial vessel. It completes it. It transforms a beautiful object into an unmistakably personal one.

A family brings a photograph. Perhaps it is Marley running through the park. Perhaps it is their cat curled in a favourite spot. Within hours, that image - printed with the full richness and detail that only sublimation can deliver - is part of a memorial that could belong to no one else. The urn manufacturer's craftsmanship and the personalisation layer work together. One makes the object. The other makes it theirs.

>> Read the whole article in THANOS Magazine 2/2026 — see page 28.