Farming portal secures funding

FOL provides a b2b online community for the agricultural industry, enabling members to engage in procurement for agricultural products and view the latest sector news. The company says that its re-branding has been undertaken to reinforce itself as the principle business facilitator for the industry, with the enabling of e-commerce activities as its main goal.

The FOL website, boasting a registered user base of about 18,000 and averaging 1.5m page downloads a month, has been upgraded and redesigned for added functionality and now also incorporates improved information services across all sectors of the industry.

Steven Duckett, Managing Director of Internet Capital said: “FOL Networks have established an exciting business model that we see as providing an important service to the European agricultural industry. In the coming months, we will be looking to support FOL Network's geographic expansion and aid FOL in significantly expanding its e-commerce capabilities.”

FOL said that the funding from Internet Capital, an internet holding company which engages in b2b e-commerce through a network of partner companies, will be used to accelerate the development of current services.

The company currently has over 100 companies signed up in its trading area, and also works as a solution provider, integrating back-end platforms for corporate agricultural companies who are changing their business process to incorporate e-commerce.

FOL currently hosts sites for a number of the industry's corporates, including Allied Grain, Cargills, Kemira, HGCA, the British Potato Council, and Rhome-Poulenc.

A spokesman for the company said: “As an ISP, we provide access to FOL for farmers on their systems where corporate companies put up their information. For example, all beet farmers would send their deliveries to British Sugar which would be processed immediately. Within 24 hours, information on the sodium, potassium content and so on, would be displayed on the screen. The farmers, with access to information on the content of their sugar beet would know, for example, to start farming another field. And, of course, this also allows British Sugar to control deliveries to their factories.

“The reason that we have this market place is because of the specialist expertise within the company on both the agricultural and technical side. We've got professionals from the agricultural marketplace and highly skilled technology and internet people.”