B2B information. FarmWizard, the Belfast-based provider of agricultural software has been acquired by AgriWebb, of Sydney, as part of a wider £8m (A$14m) deal, which includes a seven-figure investment from new minority shareholder the UK-based Wheatsheaf Group which has owned a majority in FarmWizard since 2015. It is believed Wheatsheaf will now own almost 30% of AgriWebb, the privately-owned farm management software company which was founded in 2014 by a fascinating US-Australian trio: US-born, sometime school teacher and software entrepreneur Kevin Baum, former barrister John Fargher, and Justin Webb, an ex hedge fund owner (and international rowing champion). Webb and Fargher are from farming families and it was their data-primitive use of record-filled notebooks that had inspired the launch of AgriWebb. It is a cloud-based software-as-a-service livestock management platform designed to “digitise the notebooks that sat in the top pockets of Australian farmers”. The potential was quickly recognised by investors, helping to raise A$500k in 2015 and a further A$3m in 2016. The company also received a A$600k grant from the Australian government. Webb says: “Our early investors had all come to the fundamental realisation that agricultural production must meet the shift in demand. With farming land under competitive demand, the onus falls on increases in productivity through the conduit of technology to solve the shortcoming of a potential global food crisis.” Four years ago, the company began with a handful of farmers using an iPad-only app. AgriWebb is now Australia’s market leader in livestock software, with customers and enterprise clients across Australia and the UK, South Africa and Brazil. Globally, it is now used on 2,700 farms (1,700 of which are in Australia). The acquisition of FarmWizard came about as a result of Wheatsheaf’s approach to AgriWebb whose founders said the deal would “transform the future of digital agriculture”. FarmWizard’s dairy focus and individual animal management functionality is said to complement AgriWebb’s focus on pasture-based livestock management systems prevalent in Australia. The only slightly discordant note of the deal for a brilliant Aussie company is that there is, confusingly, the “Agri-web” company, based in FarmWizard’s Northern Ireland, which supplies “rubber grading screens” to the worldwide agricultural market. The six-year-old Wheatsheaf Group is part of the Grosvenor group belonging to one of the UK’s largest landowners, the gilded Duke of Westminster. Wheatsheaf is a leading global investor in, and developer of innovative food and agtech businesses “to help meet the food requirements…of a changing global population”.
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A Duke helps AgriWebb take the UK
