New-age Australian agribusiness, AgriWebb, has won significant old money investment support from Britain to help fuel its rapid growth as a farm management and supply chain software provider.
In just four years AgriWebb’s digital livestock production and farm management service has grown from a three-man startup to become used by sheep and beef cattle producers responsible for about 10 per cent of today’s national herd and flock.
In a move set to supercharge its digital development, including expansion into the dairy supply chain, AgriWebb has gained backing from the Wheatsheaf Group.
We’ve been very focused on getting a lot of feedback from farmers so our developers know what the ordinary bloke in the paddock needs
- John Fargher, AgriWebb
Wheatsheaf is a global investor in farm technology businesses ranging from aquaculture to hydroponics and sexed semen.
It emerged recently from the Grosvenor Estate farming operation in Cheshire with a strategy to build agribusiness diversity beyond Grosvenor’s traditional farm and property development activities.
Wheatsheaf has also sold its own Belfast-based FarmWizard software business to AgriWebb as part of the $14 million transaction.
The overall deal gives the UK investor a 30 per cent stake in the local operation, which founded in Melbourne in 2014 and is now Sydney-based with 30 staff.
AgriWebb began as a low-fuss digital record keeping and paddock management alternative to the Australian farmer’s traditional pencil and pocket book.
It has since evolved to give farmers day to day records and better management efficiency by encompassing everything from animal health treatments, livestock weights, pasture productivity assessments and optimum stocking rates to crop nutrition management.
Stock accreditation and lifetime management records also make it a useful tool to satisfy the increasing quality assurance, product credibility and traceability requirements of processors and the wider food supply chain.
Broad client base
Livestock producer clients from southern Western Australia to southern Queensland are claiming big time and communications savings via AgriWebb.
Some have also attributed 20pc productivity gains to their use of the cloud-stored data to make management decisions more wisely.
“It doesn’t sound very sexy, but AgriWebb’s success with farmers has a lot to do with presenting digital record keeping in a fairly basic and easily managed format,” said co-founder, John Fargher, who grew up on the family’s South Australian sheep and cattle station in the state’s north.
“The software also lets farmers precisely measure, record, trace, and manage their farms’ performance with the sort of efficiency just not possible until now.
“We’ve been very focused on getting a lot of feedback from farmers so our developers know what the ordinary bloke in the paddock needs and what makes sense to them on the screen.”
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In the paddock farmers use AgriWebb’s app on their smartphone or tablet devices to record or monitor stock management decisions.
Once back within internet connectivity, the software automatically updates and is available on the office computer for further assessment, or to help guide farm business strategies.
Time savings
Mr Fargher said one of the biggest benefits to producers and those in associated businesses was the 80pc cut in time spent auditing a farm’s livestock activities.
He felt a good indicator of AgriWebb’s success was that fewer than 0.5pc of farmers who had signed up to the service in the past four years had stopped using it.
Buying FarmWizard would help AgriWebb develop a more advanced farm management product suite, while consolidating the company’s existing herd management software with the UK acquisition’s dairy and individual animal management functions.
Chief executive officer and another farm-bred co-founder, Kevin Baum, said the AgriWebb team was excited by the opportunity Wheatsheaf’s investment presented his company, which until now has relied on capital raised from farmer and agribusiness supporters, staff shareholders, and other associates.
“Like AgriWebb, Wheatsheaf is committed to making a positive impact on the challenges faced globally in food production and the efficient use of natural resources,” he said
“We’re proud our expertise and potential in this field has been recognised.”
Wheatsheaf Group, established six years ago, holds stakes in 18 different companies in the innovative food and agtech sectors.
The company is part of the Grosvenor Estate business activities of the Grosvenor family, headed by the Duke of Westminster, including it’s big Grosvenor international property group, involved in property development, investment and fund management.
Diverse ag investor
Wheatsheaf’s began based around the estate’s Grosvenor Farms dairy and 2100 hectares of cropping and grazing country.
It now has investments in such diverse agricultural enterprises as Aero Farms, the world’s largest indoor vertical hydroponic business in New Jersey, USA; Canadian fertiliser business Ostara, which recovers phosphorus from waterways; Canadian insect based stockfeed maker, Enterra, and beef and dairy sexed semen technology specialist, Cogent.
Other interests span food preservation technology, animal genetics, timber and organic cropping in Peru, and cheese and medical herbs in Slovakia.
Wheatsheaf chief operating officer, Anthony James, said the company took an innovation-led approach to identifying, investing in and helping develop product or service-led companies with potential to make material differences to food production efficiency.
“We see AgriWebb as a global leader in farm management technology and look forward to working with the team to further our mutual goals of improving livestock production,” he said.
Company chairman and co-founder, Justin Webb, noted Australia’s agriculture sector was tipped to double in production value in 15 years creating the nation’s next $100 billion industry by 2030.
“We see our mission as leading the digital future of agriculture with technology and data-driven solutions to help it achieve that $100b goal.
Mr Fargher said given the difficult seasonal times many farmers were experiencing now, their management needed as much support as possible so timely decisions were made to ensure farms ran at maximum efficiency.
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