Visit to Thatchers Cider Company
Download IMG_3467.jpegPosted on Thu, Apr 3, 2025 2:17 PM
After 20 minutes in the company of Martin Thatcher it is quite clear that he should be in charge of all UK education. His simple, no-nonsense approach to education, coupled with his company's excellent support of apprenticeships would make him the ideal candidate.
Thatchers apprenticeships give their recipients a thorough grounding in all things associated with cider and its marketing, but also, so much more. From team building with rugby clubs, to taking part in accountant and lawyer meetings. From learning about domestic budgeting, to understanding how mortgages work, and from learning about public speaking, to making presentations to the board. Any apprentice who does not become part of their impressive retention rate of employment, will leave Thatchers, after their 18month/2-year apprenticeship, with confidence, and all-round life skills that are largely missing from the formal school education curriculum.
The 271 members of staff are important to Thatchers but on visiting the factory you are hard pressed to find any of them! As 30,000 cans an hour of Thatchers Gold fly past as you enter the canning plant. They are filled, packed, palletised and moved on to the warehouse with no more than a couple of people monitoring screens.
As you follow the progress of a pallet of canned cider it is soon joined by a pallet of kegs which have been filled nearby, also heading to store. As you are marvelling at this level of automation, you then see pallets of empty kegs and cans being conveyed in the opposite direction, towards the filling lines. The software has demanded their appearance. The warehouse is an impressive building and, as with the other modern buildings on the site, much thought has been given to reduce the exterior impact on the surrounding village. But when we enter the warehouse, to follow our pallets, you realise the investment in automation is at another level.
Pallets are automatically placed on shelves within the warehouse but mixed, so not all product is in one place. Although initially sounding counterintuitive, this method means that when a lorry load of a particular product is called upon, the numerous picking machines do not get bunched up, and efficiency increases.
On our visit we were privileged that Martin and Eleanor Thatcher gave us so much of their time. We learnt that this 5 generation business started in 1902 when Martin Great Grandfather swapped coffin making and undertaking for farming. Cider making was a part of the business from the beginning. Now there are over 100 million litres of cider made annually with 650 acres of apple growing, but no farming.
Focusing on core products and not spreading your management and resources too thinly is very much part of the family's thinking, particularly following Martin's Nuffield Scholarship in 2005. Building the brand, keeping things simple and not being frightened to follow your gut instinct have played a key part in the immense growth of this business over the last 20 years. This was particularly true when Covid hit, and all the Pub trade vanished overnight. Within days this family structured business had made the decision to cease all keg production and transfer that volume to cans and bottles. This ability to assess the situation, take a risk and implement a plan so quickly, soon paid dividends as retail demand soared.
Having toured the factory, we ventured back to the meeting room where, chief cider maker, Richard, gave us an opportunity to taste various ciders, giving us a good understanding of the many different varieties of apples and how their individual characteristics create different ciders.
This was an awe inspiring visit to a very well managed, large business. We are extremely grateful to Martin and Eleanor Thatcher, a long with Richard, for their time, their openness and willingness to share their experiences. Martin talked about seminal moments in the timeline of the business. From when his grandfather started bottling cider and selling to local pubs, to when, more recently, they took the plunge into TV advertising (the retriever is real)! I heartily thank them on behalf of everyone present on the day.
Being proud of what you do is very much part of this family business principles. This manifests itself in the incredible tidiness throughout the factory and no less so in the manicured landscaped areas on the 11 acre site. Even the untidy areas were immaculate!
Chris Behagg