Virtually every caravan and motorhome in Europe comes fitted with one of the toilets that Thetford manufacture at this site. They make over 200,000 toilets a year. But with such a dominant position in the market, the company had  to look at ways of diversifying their range to grow their business.

We met with Pascal Kuijten, Product Manager at Thetford BV, who talked to us about their main business (toilets) but also about the other product lines Thetford manufacture here in the Netherlands, and the company’s challenges and projects for the future.

SIMON: Today we are in Thetford in Eten-Leur in the Netherlands, another giant in the leisure vehicle industry and manufacturers of what possibly is the most essential product in a caravan or motorhome. But it’s not just toilets you make here. What other items do you make?  

PASCAL: Toilets is the main business, with 200,000 of those coming out of this factory every year. Next to that, we have a big plant here making fridges and refrigerators that go into RVs and motorhomes.

We also produce the additives that you put in your caravan toilet. About 6 or 7 million litres of these fluids come out of this plant and go all over the world.

And finally, we make all the service doors for outside the vehicles. These are also manufacturer and assembled here in Etten-Leur.

These are the four most important product lines.

SIMON: Last week we went to Rotherham to see your ovens being made. Do you have any other plants in Europe?

PASCAL: This is the European headquarters. In Italy we have a small plant building toilets for the marine business, and in the US we have a big plant building fridges for the US market. But for the European market this is the main headquarters and production facilities.

LEE: I think every caravan and motorhome in Europe, possibly in the world, has a Thetford toilet…

Yes, 98% roughly.

LEE: With such a dominant position, how do you plan to grow your business? Are there other products that you are pushing as well as your fantastic toilets?

PASCAL: We cannot sit back a lean back because. Improving our current product is one of the things we try to do.

We want to bring new additives, concentrated bottles, allowing you to carry less weight and less volume in your vehicle.

Talking about refrigerators, we want to improve that range too, bringing new ideas, new innovative concepts to the market.

In the toilet business, the biggest innovation is in water and waste management. We introduced a new system at the Dusseldorf show that uses your grey water to rinse your toilet, capturing the water for longer in your vehicle so we can extend the off-grid time in your motorhome by a couple of days.

And we have a very innovative system to get rid of your grey and black water in one go.

That’s our biggest innovation.

SIMON: So, it’s like an onboard super pitch, where your vehicle is plumbed in. For caravans, it’s more like the motorhome set up with the added bonus of having your loo plumbed in as well.

PASCAL: Yes, it’s the connection of the systems together.

SIMON: That sounds really interesting. And it must have good environmental implications as well…

PASCAL: Yes, of course. You use less water to rinse the toilet. You carry less weight while travelling. And there is also an intelligent system for the additives, so these are being dosed into it so you use only what you need on demand.

SIMON: We look forward to seeing how that develops in the future.

SIMON: Going back to what is going on behind us here at the factory, how many toilets are being produced and how many models?

PASCAL: More than 200,000 toilets are produced a year and roughly in four different models.

SIMON: And could you please describe in very simple terms the manufacturing process of these?

PASCAL: We are an assembly factory. For the toilets it’s mainly injected plastic parts that we get in from different suppliers in Europe.

We assemble the toilets by hand with simple tools, hand tools and semiautomatic robotics.

And because of the wide range of models and customisations, we do a lot of small badges here. We have good flexibility for changing models and shifts and adapt to our customers demands.

LEE: With regards to fitting your products, a couple of weeks ago I spent time on the Bailey production line fitting various bits and pieces. Is there a vendor vet process or a process they must adhere to at Bailey when your equipment such as toilets or fridges is fitted in the caravan? Do you keep an eye on Bailey?

PASCAL: What we do, especially with the fridges, we test them here offline, so we guarantee the safety and security of the products. Then we do onsite audits with the different manufacturers where we check the installation. Also, we have to learn from the way our products are assembled to get the right fittings and the right installations for our customers.

SIMON: From a Bailey perspective, and certainly for our sister company PRIMA Leisure, your greatest success in terms of diversifying is your toilet fresh-up sets. Could you explain what this is?

PASCAL: This is the magic box that everybody buying a pre-loved caravan need. Imagine buying a 5 or 10 years old caravan. The first thing you want to replace is your seat cover and the waste holding tank. And that’s exactly what you get. It’s very easy to install a fresh and clean cassette tank and seating cover and you are good to go for another 10 years.

SIMON: It’s a brilliant idea and they’ve gone down a storm. It’s a best seller for PRIMA and perfect for people who are buying a pre-owned caravan. It’s an innovative idea and I imagine you’re looking to do similar sort of concepts going forward…

PASCAL: Yes. We have these sets for every model we make right now and we are always looking at ways to improve the bits and pieces that are already in the market.

SIMON: It’s a great idea, and if there is one caravan that really needs a fresh-up set is this one after Lee and I have been using it for two weeks…

SIMON: Moving on to more serious issues, like all businesses, you’ve faced unique challenges over the last couple of years. The first one was Brexit, which is obviously a UK initiative. How has that affected you?

PASCAL: We had some difficulties. Trying to get all our stuff into the UK on time was a challenge for our logistics team. But so far, they have managed with some extra effort.

From a legislation point of view, there are also some things we now have to do when we introduce products in the UK. But it’s not slowing us down in developing. It’s just like a new country.

SIMON: It’s good to see that you got some minor issues and challenges, but you got over them quite quickly and hadn’t really slowed supply. COVID on the other must have been a huge issue…

PASCAL: In the RV business the big difference is that during COVID, everybody went out camping, everybody bought new fresh up sets, new additives, new toilets, new caravans and motorhomes all over Europe. But our complete supply chain was locked down. Getting stuff from Asia, from the US, from Europe, was extremely difficult.

SIMON: Typically, where do you get your raw materials from?

PASCAL: We do a lot of plastics here. Toilets and refrigerators have a lot of plastics in them. We used to get these from China, but COVID forced us to look for other suppliers, second or third suppliers to keep our supply chain filled with the right specific materials. Because the plastics in a toilet are not something you can get off the shelf. It has to be of an specific quality.

So getting all the plastics is a challenge, as well as the electronics. Every toilet and fridge has a little PCB (printed circuit board) in there. We are in the same chips crisis that the rest of the world. There were moments when we had 33 containers all over the globe with Thetford products in, and they were not all on time, so we had to manage that as well.

LEE: With the supply chain issues in mind, has that had a knock-on effect with the prices of raw materials?

PASCAL: Of course. We all see for example when we go to a supermarket that everything is getting more expensive. We are doing our best to, on one hand, try to redesign some products and find different suppliers and different sources to keep the prices down.

But on the other end, we have to manage that too in our corporation and with our customers.

SIMON: It does put a lot of price pressure and you can’t always absorb it. That’s just the world we live in at the moment…

PASCAL: Yes, exactly.

And with employees as well.

The demand was high. We had to do extra shifts to get all the products into Europe, but there were not enough people to make those products. So we tried to get in over a hundred people in the last year to fill our assembly line.

It has been challenging but we have managed so far.

SIMON: It sounds like you are well equipped for the future. And talking about the future, what are you doing as a business to reduce your environmental impact and reduce your carbon footprint?

PASCAL: We have different programs running. One of them is an innovation platform where all our employees, from managers to operatives in the factory, can drop their ideas on reducing our environmental footprint in the factory and of our products. That can be from reducing the plastic that goes around, to a new innovative product to go in caravans over the next ten years.

All those ideas are then considered by a team and put into the right project to try to implement them.

SIMON: It’s an integrated part of the company strategy going forward…

PASCAL: Yes, also bringing new products to the market. We talked about this earlier. We look at how to reduce weight, waste and energy used, and we also try to do that with fridges. For example, by trying to move away from gas, go to compressor fridges and trying to get the best performing products in that market. That’s one of the challenges we are diving into.

SIMON: Similar thing with your concentrated toilet fluids. Smaller, and lighter, so less toilet chemicals, more beer. It’s a win-win.

PASCAL: Absolutely.

END

Take a look at the gallery below to see images from our day at Thetford BV. Hover over the information icon on each photo to read the caption.