Powered by Cow Poo. Protecting you from Cow Pats.

Cow poo and Mucky Nutz mudguards have more in common than you might think.

All of our injection-moulded mudguards, including the MugGuard and Zennor ranges, are manufactured here in the South West at a site supplied with locally generated renewable electricity, some of which is produced from cow manure through anaerobic digestion. So yes, cow poo genuinely helps power the manufacture of our mudguards. Those same mudguards then head out into the world to help protect you and your bike from… cow pats. There’s something nicely circular about that.

Anyone who rides UK lanes, gravel tracks or trails will know that mud isn’t always just mud. Hit the wrong patch at speed and a decent mudguard can be the difference between carrying on happily and getting a mouthful of something you’d really rather not think about.

So, are our mudguards actually made from cow poo?

No. Let’s clear that one up before anyone starts looking too closely at the material specification. There is absolutely no cow poo in our mudguards. What there is, however, is a rather clever renewable-energy system helping power the Devon site where they are manufactured. 

So while saying our mudguards are made from cow poo would be pushing things a bit, saying that cow poo helps provide some of the energy used to make them is very much true.

From poo to power

Anaerobic digestion sounds considerably more sophisticated than “turning cow poo into electricity”. Which is probably just as well. 

In simple terms, organic material including livestock manure and crops is fed into large digesters, where microorganisms break it down in the absence of oxygen. This produces biogas, which can then be used to generate renewable electricity. And it doesn’t simply leave behind another pile of waste. The remaining material, known as digestate, can be returned to agricultural land and used as a nutrient-rich fertiliser.

So, in extremely simplified Mucky Nutz terms:

Farm produces manure.
Manure helps produce energy.
Energy helps make mudguards.
Mudguards help keep cow pats off cyclists.

We like that.

Made closer to home

Having our injection-moulded mudguards made in Devon, just up the road from Mucky Nutz HQ in Cornwall, also means we can work more closely with the people actually making them, keep a closer eye on quality and be far more involved when developing something new.

That’s particularly important when getting things like fit, stiffness, durability and overall performance right involves a lot more than simply sending a model off and hoping for the best.

It also fits with the wider way we try to make things, using recycled materials where they’re suitable, reducing unnecessary packaging, designing products to last and working with suppliers closer to home.

We’re not going to pretend that making products has no environmental impact. It does. But we can keep looking for sensible ways to reduce it. And having renewable electricity generated locally as part of that manufacturing setup is another small but worthwhile part of the picture.

A more circular kind of mudguard

We quite like the fact that none of this was invented as a marketing exercise. It’s simply part of how our mudguards are made, and it just happens to create one of the more unusual manufacturing stories we’ve come across.

Not a bad journey for a cow pat.