Inflexion announces carve-out of GfK’s animal and crop health business

Inflexion Private Equity today announces that it has signed an agreement to carve-out GfK’s animal and crop health business, the global market leader in the provision of agricultural data and market information, from GfK, the Frankfurt-listed global market research organisation.

GfK’s animal and crop health business delivers innovative, data driven market information to the agriculture and animal health markets, providing detailed insights into their customers’ key growth requirements. The business, led by its Global Director Stephen Hearn, has grown rapidly since inception and delivered sales of $40m in 2014. Employing around 220 people in 18 countries, GfK’s animal and crop health business serves a wide range of long standing, blue chip, global R&D manufacturers in precision agriculture, animal health, crop protection and biotechnology.

Inflexion is backing the talented management team to support continued growth, including targeting further international and digital development in markets that see an increasing need for real-time, well informed data solutions.

John Hartz, Managing Partner at Inflexion, commented: “We are delighted to have agreed the buyout of the animal and crop health business from GfK. It is the global market leader in its field and has enjoyed strong growth across international markets. It’s great to have the expertise and resources in-house to execute this carve-out, our second of 2015, as well as our international and digital capabilities to support further growth in the business.”

Stephen Hearn, GfK’s Global Director of the animal and crop health business, said: “We are pleased to have signed this deal together with Inflexion and look forward to accelerating the growth of our animal and crop health business as a newly independent company. Inflexion shares our ambition for the future and together we will continue to deliver best-in-class data solutions to our customers.”

The Inflexion deal team was led by Mark Williams and included Richard Swann, Jon Andrew, Phil Edmans and Richard Wootten.