Guild members and other staffers on Farmers Guardian and Dairy Farmer heard on Friday that Briefing Media Group is paying around £10 million for the two farming titles and UBM’s medical general practitioner portfolio.
Together, they generated revenues of more than £12 million in 2011. The deal should be finalised by the end of March.
Neil Thackray, co-owner of Briefing Media Group, is a former publishing director at Reed Business Information; his fellow director, Rory Brown, is a specialist in the field of interactive marketing. They plan to invest in the titles to increase their market position in print and online, and to accelerate the portfolio of digital, data-led products and physical events.
“This is a big day for us, and something we have been working towards for a long time,” says Rory Brown. “We see great opportunity in specialist business media markets and look forward to working with the teams on the agriculture and primary healthcare titles as part of our expanded group.”
The young publishing group is growing out of the 2010 launch of theMediaBriefing.com, a news website serving the publishing industry.
“When we founded Briefing Media we had a vision for creating a vibrant new business to business media company,” says Neil Thackray. “This acquisition gives us both the scale and market opportunity to accelerate that ambition. “We are delighted to be acquiring assets with such excellent pedigrees and reputations in important business markets,” he adds. “This will be the first but not the last acquisition we make.”
Farmers Guardian and Dairy Farmer employ 57 staff, mostly based in Preston, Lancashire. UBM’s CEO, David Levin said: “I would like to thank our teams in Preston and in London for their contribution to UBM over the years and wish them and their new management teams well for the future.”
UBM has retained ownership of the Cropworld international agronomy conference.
