Pet-food group The Nutriment Company has been acquisitive in recent years under CEO Anders Kristiansen, supported by backing from Nordic private-equity firm Axcel – and a couple more deals are on the cards to round out 2025.
Sweden-based The Nutriment Company was founded in 2014 as Voff Premium Pet Food but rebranded last year to what is now commonly known as TNC.
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Specialising in fresh pet food for dogs and cats, with a smaller presence in pet treats and supplements targeted at the European market, Kristiansen chats with Just Food’s Simon Harvey to discuss what the future holds.
Simon Harvey (SH): You guys have been going crazy with acquisitions.
Anders Kristiansen (AK): We’re not going crazy but we have a solid plan. I came to the business two and a half years ago. Back then, we had bought an average of one business a year and I thought we should try and accelerate that but you can’t accelerate before you have a team.
We started putting an infrastructure in place with a bigger M&A team but it’s not enough just to have a bigger M&A team, you also have to have a team that can integrate the businesses. We have invested time, money and energy in building that infrastructure. Now we have the infrastructure, we can progress super quickly.
We have bought seven companies this year and we will announce one in the beginning of October, which is a sizable one in a new market for us.
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By GlobalDataSH: Before we come to markets, can you explain the company’s philosophy given the busy acquisition schedule?
AK: We like fresh pet food, and within fresh, we’ve got fresh frozen and freshly cooked and we would like to invest and expand in that area so we cover all formats.
The world of dogs is changing. It’s going from bigger dogs into smaller dogs. If you serve fresh or raw pet food and you have this big block of meat, it’s not necessarily convenient if you’ve got small dogs. We have invested in a new format that’s more convenient if you have a smaller dog – pellets, patties.
We want to make sure we cover customers geographically everywhere in Europe and often acquisitions help. Those companies we acquire are often strong in one geographical area so we buy access to customers and to different new formats.
SH: Is it The Nutriment Company’s aim to become the largest pet-food manufacturer in Europe?
AK: We might already be the largest within fresh pet food and we aim to triple the size that we have within the next four or five years.
SH: I was going to ask whether there are any markets in Europe that you aren’t in where you might have your eyes on M&A but now you have a new deal lined up in a new market.
AK: If you look at fresh, frozen pet food, the biggest markets are the UK and Germany and that’s where we have the biggest foothold. The Nordics are big, so we are in the Nordics. Benelux we are in and we recently entered Spain.
That’s a very fast-growing market within the fresh category, growing more than 20%, so we’ve now got a company there [Puromenu]. France is exciting for us.
Poland is exciting.
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, all of eastern Europe is of interest for us, so that’s where you will see an announcement for an acquisition in one of those markets in a few weeks.
We are adding one new market in two or three weeks, and then we’ll probably add an additional market before the end of the year.
SH: The pet-food market really took off during the pandemic with increased pet ownership, is that a trend you’ve seen right across Europe, in eastern Europe, for instance, given the upcoming deal?
AK: What’s interesting is that when I had a dog as a kid we fed the dog leftovers. Over time, because of good marketing, there was a switch to kibbles, which is less of a good product than leftovers.
In many places in eastern Europe, that’s how they feed their dogs, with leftovers from the table so they might be easier to convince to go into what we are selling, the fresh natural product.
SH: Is there a bit of a tail off in pet ownership and pet-food demand with the cost-of-living crunch or do you see this humanisation trend and people treating pets as part of the family as a long-running trend?
AK: I think you’re right. You came from having growth rates of 8-10% in pet food over a number of years during Covid and right after Covid but we are not at that level anymore.
But we’re still seeing a switch… like we as humans, we educate ourselves in terms of what we eat and how we stay healthy, how we live longer and consumers are doing the same for their dogs.
Even though we grow fast through acquisitions, we also have good, strong organic growth
We are in a good spot. The market will continue to grow a few per cent a year, not like before, but the natural segment, the fresh segment where we are, will grow much faster.
Even though we grow fast through acquisitions, we also have good, strong organic growth in our business.
SH: In human foods, consumers are reportedly eating out less but are willing to spend more on food at home on pricier fare to replicate that meal out. Is that an impression you have for pet food as well?
AK: I think they are. Not everybody can afford to go premium all the time for their pet but I think the trend is, and that’s what we see, is going in that direction. They want to feed their pet a better product.
SH: What contributes the most to The Nutriment Company’s annual revenue from the portfolio of cat and dog foods, treats and supplements?
AK: If you look at the fresh-food category, it’s 60% and then it’s 30% natural treats and 10% supplements. If you look between cats and dogs, we’re probably 95-96% dogs.
SH: Is the growth mainly in pet foods for dogs rather than cats?
AK: Cats are taking more and more now. Our latest acquisition is a cat business [Purrform] because that’s where you have the highest growth rates at the moment and we have not been particularly strong in cats. It’s a segment where we will do more and more now.
SH: How does The Nutriment Company fund all of these acquisitions? From your own cash on hand?
AK: Axcel are the smart guys. They have teamed up with a debt provider. So as long as we stay within a certain matrix, we have got access to funds to buy new businesses. As long as TNC performs well, we continue to have access to funds.
SH: Are there any limits to what you can spend?
AK: Yes and no. We like to buy businesses between €1m ($1.1m) and €5m EBITDA, relatively small businesses. The idea is that we then roll up those businesses into our business, our structure, so we have one e-commerce platform, we have one sales force and we have one business intelligence system on top of it all to support these businesses.
SH: Is there a risk when you’re doing so many acquisitions that The Nutriment Company can get bloated? Many food companies that have built up through M&A got overstretched and are now divesting, selling brands or splitting up.
AK: In the grand scheme of things, we’re still very small compared to a Mars or Nestlé. We’re tiny compared to them.
What is different to many other companies, we integrate these businesses. We bought a business in the UK called TNPP [Totally Natural Pet Products] last year. That company doesn’t exist anymore as TNPP. We have rebranded it to be one of our three brands in a good bit of a strategy.
That’s what we do very well. We don’t have anything to divest because it’s become one big business.
SH: How about manufacturing plants? The Nutriment Company must have a huge network after so many acquisitions?
AK: We are constantly working on integrating these production sites. Then we have more efficient production but we also have far better standards in those big production sites than we have when we acquire some local business in Europe.
We are integrating into two main production sites. One in the UK and one in Germany. We have two sites in Finland but one is for treats. We have two in Benelux, which will soon become one.
SH: Are you able to give some insight into revenues and growth rates?
AK: This year we will finish around €240-250m of sales. With that number, we’ve probably grown 50-60% on the prior year.
SH: Is there any longer-term target, whether through acquisitions or organically, to make TNC, for example, a €1bn company in ten years, let’s say?
AK: Our five-year plan says we would like to get to around €650m. To get to €650m, that’s slowing down on the pace we have at the moment, so I think that’s more than doable.
SH: M&A in pet food seems to have cooled from the pandemic-set pace but why do you think companies are so willing to sell up?
AK: I think what has happened with many of these businesses is maybe they were founded 20 years ago, and the owner is a little bit older, they think, ‘I’ve worked long enough, hard enough, and it’s time to sell’. It’s difficult for them to continue to grow the business and make them more efficient.
SH: Given your concentration in Europe, I don’t suppose your eyeing up any other regions outside Europe?
AK: Not at the moment. There’s so much to do in Europe that we would prefer to focus on Europe because that’s easy for us to integrate businesses. But three or four years down the line, then we might start to look outside.
SH: Is pet supplements an area where you might consider further M&A?
AK: Yes. Before the end of the year, I think we would have acquired another supplements business. We have two today, and I think we’d have acquired one more by the back end of the year.
SH: Any future plans to go public with an IPO?
AK: Most private-equity companies like pet food, it’s still a growing business, and we are growing fast. I think within a couple of years, we would either sell to a large cap private-equity fund or we would go public. I think both are valid options.
