NZX today announced the acquisition of Australian-based ProFarmer Australia Limited Pty.
ProFarmer, established in 1994, is based in Perth, Australia. ProFarmer is Australia's leading provider of agricultural news, commodity market information and strategic grain market analysis, which it provides to customers via weekly newsletters, market price updates and specialist reports. ProFarmer also provides historical agricultural commodity price data and farm consulting, training and other agri-business services to grain farmers and leading market analysts.
Head of NZX's agricultural businesses, Rachael Cross said, "This is NZX's third agri-business acquisition in the last three years. We have learned a great deal about the rural sector over this time. The ProFarmer business complements our existing primary sector focused businesses and positions NZX as a leading independent agricultural data and information provider across New Zealand and in Australia."
In April this year NZX purchased Melbourne based Dairy Week, a business recognised for providing a comprehensive and market leading weekly news bulletin service on the Oceania dairy sectors. NZX's first primary sector acquisition was Agrifax in 2006, which provides data services and analysis on New Zealand's agricultural sector, including comprehensive weekly and monthly reports on New Zealand's dairy, lamb, beef and forestry industries.
ProFarmer Managing Director, Richard Koch said, "NZX recognises the growing importance of agriculture and is committed to playing a role in its success across the Asia pacific region. ProFarmer is widely recognised for supplying high quality information to the Australian primary sector, and in particular to grain market participants. This association between NZX and ProFarmer will combine respective strengths to accelerate growth and strengthen the supply of critical market information to this sector."
Koch will continue as Managing Director of ProFarmer and operations will remain based in Perth.
"The fit between our existing primary sector information and data businesses and ProFarmer is excellent. ProFarmer customers will benefit from access to a wider product set and continued development of existing ProFarmer offerings. Likewise we believe some of our existing NZX Agrifax and Dairy Week customers will find the ProFarmer publications valuable business tools to keep them informed and to assist them in making their business decisions," said Cross.
