AGI Buys Outstanding Shares in Affinity

Grain handling equipment maker Ag Growth Industries (AGI) plans to level up on its Suretrack farm management software platform with a deal for another Canadian player in the same business.

Winnipeg-based AGI announced last week it has bought all outstanding shares in Ontario-based Affinity Management Ltd., developer of the Compass brand of farm and agribusiness management software.

Affinity, which was founded by Neal Dilawri in 2007 and built through partnership with chemical firm BASF, has 18 employees. Dilawri will now take a senior leadership role on the AGI SureTrack platform and provide “vision and guidance” going forward, AGI said.

The Compass product suite is “highly complementary to AGI’s current offering and will be a key component of the full AGI SureTrack platform,” AGI said.

The SureTrack platform, formerly known as Intellifarms, includes the SureTrack Farm system for farmers and the SureTrack Pro system for processors, merchandisers and grain buyers.

The platform is meant to bring together data from “across the farm, providing our customers with the ability to manage their crop production, manage their overall business, and market their grain based on content and robust traceability,” AGI CEO Tim Close said.

In an update last week on its fourth-quarter financials, AGI said it has “demonstrated the success of its AGI SureTrack subscription model” in 2019, by “increasing retail equivalent sales by 70 percent, despite capacity constraints and a challenging U.S. ag market.”

Source: Glacier FarmMedia Network | Member since 1996 | aggrowth.com