From what I can work out it's near impossible to get animation from Houdini in to UE4 - alembic or some other geometry cache based method. Fault lies with UE4 here, I think Alembic support is planned for the future though and so that is at least something.

In the meantime I would very much appreciated it if some kind soul could provide a few pointers, or even better the steps required to get the attached animation in to UE4.

I think the following links and examples do something similar but not quite what I need for my animation:

http://forums.odforce.net/topic/13254-fracture-dop-animation-to-keyframes/ [forums.odforce.net]
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=20183&view=next&sid=75210de8517f6a5d397e705aa53ace93 [sidefx.com]
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=193323 [sidefx.com]

I think the first link might be closet, but because the examples in the links above are for an RDB fracture and my animation is not an RDB fracture. From what I can make out it should be possible for me to bake out any simulation so I can export as an FBX (required by UE4).

Are keyframes the way to go here? UE4 only supports FBX import at the moment and there are some limitations (e.g. no vertex cache support), I think Blendshapes/Morphtargets are supported, but I don't have much experience here. If they are a better route than keyframes how would one go about automating the creation of them for my animation.