Forthglade

If you won’t eat it, don’t feed it to your pet, The Forthglade ethos that quadrupled branded sales in only five years.

Invested £6m in 2015. Exited in 2020

Founded in Devon in 1971, Forthglade is the UK’s most established maker of natural pet food, producing a range of majority protein wet dog food. The brand was an early pioneer in providing grain-free products. At least 95% of ingredients are sourced in the UK, many as locally as possible.

With humanisation being one of the key drivers of the pet food market, and more and more owners being increasingly conscious about the quality of their pet food, we were delighted to invest £6m into the Forthglade business in 2015 to support its further growth. At the time of our investment, Forthglade employed 75 staff and reached sales of over £11m.

The investment enabled the business to expand its distribution, mature its branded offering and establish its own direct to consumer channel. At Piper, we love brands that can speak directly to their customers. We first met Forthglade when the business was primarily a private label supplier to Pets At Home and other retailers, with branded sales making up just 35% of sales. We worked with them to develop and grow a successful high repeat direct to consumer online channel, of which the Forthglade brand made up 70%. Branded sales increased more than four times in five years.

With strong demand came the need to build a new 70,000sq ft state of the art factory at Okehampton that enabled the business to triple production capacity and create a highly environmentally friendly and circular manufacturing system. 20m litres of water are recycled every year, equivalent to eight Olympic-size swimming pools. Food waste is recycled and turned into electricity, the bio-fertiliser produced is used to fertilise the land, and the excess energy from the production process is used to heat offices and staff facilities.

In September 2020 we sold our stake to IK Investment Partners with the business well positioned for the next leg of its exciting journey, with the natural segment forecast to grow its share of the total wet dog food market from 15% to 27% by 2024.