10 Years of Pure Cremation

April 10, 2025/Cremation, Preneed/

There has probably not been a Death Care company that had as rapid an accension as British direct cremation provider Pure Cremation. Founded in 2015 as a direct cremation company by the husband and wife team of Bryan and Catherine Powell history shows that the company conducted about 1,000 cremations in 2017 and about 2,000 cremations in 2018.

It was at that point in 2018 that they received a US $10 million investment by private equity firm Puma Investments. At that time, according to this article from Funeral Director Daily, Puma Investment Director Elliot Kaye made these comments:

“. . (the) firm is putting money behind what he hopes is a winning combination of an experienced management team with a very disruptive business model within a very established market.”

While the cost of Pure Cremation’s services to a family start at about US $1600, Mr. Kaye believes that cost is not the driving factor of the company’s rapid growth. “The country is getting less religious and also less traditional across the board”, he said.

It turns out that Mr. Kyle and his team at Puma Investments read the market correct. This 2022 article from Sky News of Great Britain points out that the Powells were interested in exiting from their ownership in Pure Cremation and the figure put out there for the acquisition of their company was north of $US 500 million.

By that time Pure Cremation was not only a direct cremation provider but a major source of preneed funding as well. The article states “The Powells’ new holding company, Cognicent, has established itself as a significant disruptor in the UK’s late-life planning sector, recently becoming the UK’s largest seller of funeral plans.”

While we don’t know, from the article, how many cremations Pure Cremation conducted in 2021, the article states that the preneed arm, Cognicent, “sold over 65,000 preneed policies garnering more than US$ 65 million in revenue” that year.

And in 2023, as you can read in this article, the Epiris Fund agreed to acquire Pure Cremation.

I have been very fortunate in that, almost from the beginning of Funeral Director Daily, Pure Cremation’s Bryan Powell has been a subscriber and would contact me from time to time via e-mail. We became friendly enough colleagues that if I needed information on the Death Care profession in Great Britain I would contact Bryan and he even invited me to speak to European cremation operators at a convention in London back in about 2021 or 2022.

He’s told me no secrets about Pure Cremation’s operations and success, but I’ve got my own reasons why they became so successful. Here they are — in my order of importance.

Creating the “No fuss” funeral brand through innovative mass media marketing.
Building future services through massive Preneed marketing
Building potential customer trust by knowing the value of “Star Ratings” with customer service. They continuously note their ratings of 4.9-5.0 in their media placements. It is my opinion that “Star Ratings”, which give some indication of experiential satisfaction, are very important to the next generation of consumers.
Incredible customer service that creates those star ratings in the first place. They will pick up the deceased anywhere in Great Britain at no extra cost, they hand deliver the cremated remains to your door, and they provide the services that were promised with no additional costs.
Knowing and understanding the “changing consumer” of Death Care.
Price

According to a recent article that I read Pure Cremation’s direct cremation price as of today is about US$ 1,772. This recent article from the Doncaster (Great Britain) Free Press makes note of a start-up in Doncaster that is going to challenge Pure Cremation by coming out with direct cremation pricing of about US$ 1,292 — about US$ 500 less than Pure Cremation.

It will be interesting to see if this company, in light of the fact that my opinion of low price is not necessarily why people choose Pure Cremation, takes away Pure Cremation market share to any great extent. And, even if they do, with that less expensive price, will they have a margin to operate with?

Related Article — “My mum’s dying wish saved us US $ 4,500 on her funeral — and it was still magical”. In reference to a Pure Cremation service. The Daily Record (Great Britain)

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