This Company Wants to Take An Accenture Consulting Approach to Agriculture Businesses

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In today’s ever-growing and competitive business environment, companies are constantly devising ways to outwit competition for market share. As competition gets intense, these businesses adopt several strategies — including hiring the services of consultants — to give them an edge.

Business consultants or consulting firms are recruited to help these companies find weak areas, streamline operations and provide creative solutions for growth. Over the years, Accenture ACN, a platinum level business partner of IBM IBM — has carved a niche in this space as one of the go-to places for world-class consulting services backed by data and technology.

Accenture has helped companies worldwide execute their business strategies and accelerate transformation by integrating expertise with data and advanced technologies.

The Accenture of Agriculture?

AgriFORCE Growing Systems Ltd. AGRI, is an agriculture technology (agtech) company with a goal of providing more sustainable and better-quality food, plant-based products and ingredients, pharmaceuticals, and nutraceuticals.

As a part of their overarching business strategy - and drawing inspiration from successful organizations in other sectors who apply an integrated approach to their methodology, AgriFORCE is building out a platform for global consulting in the agtech sphere. It announced on Oct. 27 that it had entered into a binding letter of intent (LOI) to acquire a leading agtech consultancy based in Europe (yet to be named), allowing the Company to further strengthen its focus on driving agricultural optimization, innovation, solutions, and operational expertise. A further update on the target company was recently released on January 11. 

This expertise is in the agriculture, horticulture, and CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture) sectors. With global operations and more than 200 employees, this European based  agtech consultancy achieved 2020 annual consulting audited revenues of over $26 million and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $3 million (IFRS based). 

It expects to end 2021 with revenue of $28 million — as estimated by the target’s management and subject to due diligence. The purchase price AgriFORCE will pay is estimated to be in the range of $29 million with a mix of cash and stock.

AgriFORCE expects the acquisition to provide the following strategic benefits:

• AgriFORCE plans to leverage the consultancy’s decades of experience, established customer base, and deep industry relationships to accelerate deployment of its proprietary AgriFORCE Grow House and related IP, including facility and lighting design, automation, and artificial intelligence, fertigation, and nutrients as well as micropropagation and genetics.
• The consultancy has generated strong historical financial performance and consistent growth across Europe and internationally. AgriFORCE plans to build on this growth through expansion of these consulting operations and the establishment of a research and development center in North America, higher penetration of its Asian markets as well as expanding AgriFORCE’s operations in Europe.
• This acquisition is intended to place the combined operations at the forefront of knowledge and IP development and research, which AgriFORCE plans to augment with increased revenue from technical solution platforms in the key CEA verticals.

“This acquisition is an alliance of our complementary expertise and shared values,” AgriFORCE CEO Ingo Mueller said. “Both AgriFORCE and this leading European agtech consultancy are dedicated to making positive change in the lives of farmers and consumers.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity for exceptional innovation through our synergies, expanded growth in both North America and Europe for both organizations. We look forward to a robust collaboration around IP development and implementation that will support farmers all around the world in improving all aspects of agriculture — from seed to table.”

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