“Thunderbrook is truly unique”

17 July 2024

Earlier this year Pavo - ForFarmers’ organisation in the equine sector worldwide - acquired Thunderbrook Equestrian Limited, a company operating in the UK and Ireland. A company also with a special story and its own target audience. We talked about this with Rob Krabbenborg, Integration Manager and responsible for product management of the Pavo brands, and Maike Schneider, communications specialist for Pavo, Mühldorfer and Thunderbrook.

Why was the Thunderbrook acquisition important for Pavo?

Rob Krabbenborg

“Our ambition is to be a key player across Europe in countries with a large population of horses. In our core countries, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Spain, we have that position. But in the UK, a country with around a million horses, we have no real position yet”, Rob explains. “The UK is not only a large market for sales of horse feed, but also a country with a very high level of knowledge and innovation in horse nutrition. These factors make the UK an important and interesting country for us. To gain a position in this market you have to acquire a company or enter into a partnership and that is why this acquisition is very important for Pavo. In addition, this acquisition also fits into ForFarmers’ strategy of making OpCo-specific choices.”

What position do we have in the UK as a result of this acquisition?

Rob: “There are very many players in the UK, the market is quite fragmented but with a few strong brands. Thunderbrook currently has a market share of around 2-3% in the UK and certainly has the potential to grow to 5-7% market share in the next few years, which would then put us straight into a top five position. For your information, the biggest brand currently has around 12% market share. In addition, Thunderbrook is a healthy business with a large number of retailers selling Thunderbrook products and with products in its portfolio generating high margins.”

How would you characterize the Thunderbrook brand?

“Thunderbrook is really different from other brands and has a special story. Dr Deborah Carley started this company 12 years ago. She has a background in biochemistry and a PhD in Biological & Nutritional Sciences. She started making horse feed and supplements in her own kitchen, simply to make her sick horse Harlequin better. When the vet and blacksmith saw how Harlequin recovered through this feed, they were amazed and encouraged Debbie to start selling these products to other horse owners. And so Thunderbrook began. In all those years they did very little in terms of marketing or active sales, it’s really a story of word of mouth and yet they managed to achieve a 2-3% market share!” says Rob enthusiastically.

Maike adds: “The company is also very down-to-earth and another characteristic is that they use only natural ingredients and are primarily concerned with the health of the horse.”

So the products are really different?

Maike Schneider

Rob: “Yes indeed! Pavo and many other brands make traditional feed: pellets, muesli’s and supplements. Thunderbrook’s products on the other hand are largely based on roughage like ‘Healthy Herbal Chaff’, a popular product among their target audience. This is dried and chopped grass and hay sourced from organic pasture land that has never been sprayed with pesticides. So Thunderbrook’s DNA really is roughage, roughage, roughage. To that you add supplements, minerals, vitamins or herbs. A fun fact that makes this chaff special is that one of the ingredients is hay from a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) conservation area near Oxford. Hundreds of acres of grassland that have never been fertilised and have never seen pesticides. Just grass, herbs, flowers, bees, butterflies, so lots of biodiversity. Only 3% of England still consists of this kind of traditional grassland. Thunderbrook has a contract with the owner of this area to purchase the hay. So this is 100% organic with lots of biodiversity.”

How will you continue to build the Thunderbrook brand?

“The aim is to further expand our share in the leisure horse market. Pavo has a lot of experience in marketing and selling horse feed and with this experience we are obviously going to actively ‘boost’ the Thunderbrook brand in the UK market”, Rob explains.

Maike: “Thunderbrook’s target group is the leisure horse owner and those concerned with their horse’s health. This is a different target group than Pavo has. In the brand strategy, we take this into account, the positioning therefore focuses on nature, purity and simplicity. Summarised in: ‘Thunderbrook by nature’. So we stay close to the DNA of this brand.”

Rob: “Over the next few months we are mainly going to share who Thunderbrook are, share their story and connect with horse owners. This will primarily happen online as especially in the leisure market, there is a huge online horse community and that’s where Pavo’s online expertise comes in handy.”