Established in 2015, YAGRO has worked with farm businesses across the UK. The company is passionate about making professional farmers lives easier and their businesses better with its range of data-driven products and services such as commercial analytics, in-season business tracker, inputs benchmarking, and its online marketplace.
With the backing of Frontier Agriculture, YAGRO can realise its plans for team growth and new analytical tools, supercharging the proven impact the company has been delivering for farmers and industry partners over the last several years. This landmark acquisition for the UK agritech sector sees YAGRO continue to trade as an independently managed company and its current team of 15 employees will remain located at its Cambridge offices.
Mark Aitchison, Managing Director of Frontier Agriculture, said: “We are excited that YAGRO will be joining the Frontier group as an independent, standalone subsidiary company. YAGRO has quickly gained a strong reputation for nimble design and deployment of practical software solutions for farmers, advisers and the supply chain. With the backing of Frontier, YAGRO are now enabled to fast-track their strong pipeline of products currently under development, which are much needed for the whole industry.”
Gareth Davies, CEO and co-founder, said, “This announcement recognises the quality of the team and capability we have built at YAGRO, that genuinely empowers our customers to better understanding and better decision making for the farm. Now anyone across our industry – from farmers to agribusiness to Government – can be confident in navigating the hard changes ahead, with YAGRO as their trusted and proven data partner to empower insight and decision making. This also marks a hug step forward for UK Agritech and its role in driving the whole industry forward.”
PEM was appointed by the vendors to provide corporate finance and tax advice. Anil Arora, Business Tax Director at PEM Corporate Finance said:“It was a pleasure to work with Gareth and his team at YAGRO providing comprehensive transactional tax support to both the company and its shareholders throughout the deal process. The sale marks an exciting new chapter for the company and Frontier Agriculture, as well as the Agritech sector as a whole.”
Philip Olagunju, Partner at PEM Corporate Finance added, “We’re pleased to have advised another fantastic business in YAGRO, an exciting combination of agriculture and data analytics. It’s great that the business will continue to trade independently, but now with the added backing of Frontier, which will further unlock market opportunities. We wish all parties the very best for the future.”
Legal advice to the vendors was given by Rebecca Quick and Erika McIntyre of Taylor Vinters. Buy-side legal advice was by Mike Matthews, Joanne Sinclair and Bethan Wallace of Roythornes Solicitors.