Viewtrak Technologies, a widely used livestock traceability software system, will see an immediate cash injection of up to $1 million following its recent sale.
An investor group headed by W. Brett Wilson of Prairie Merchant Corp. announced acquisition of Viewtrak Aug. 13.
In an Aug. 14 interview, Wilson said he has been an investor in Viewtrak for about five years and is a friend of company founder and president Jake Burlet.
“We actually own a ton of farmland in Saskatchewan together, so we’ve been business partners for a long time,” said Wilson. “I was fascinated by the degree to which we could build this little technology company … and take it to the world.”
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Burlet will remain as a consultant to the company and his wife, Jennifer Wood, remains on the board of directors.
Wilson said Viewtrak was put up for sale about six months ago.
“What happened was, that the company just ended up with a balance sheet that wasn’t strong enough to grow to the next level,” he said.
“We expect that we’ll be injecting half a million to $1 million in the next 12 to 24 months and that really is dependent upon the needs of the company.”
Viewtrak will continue its focus on livestock traceability, Wilson said.
According to a company news release, it is the most widely used tracing and trading software in the livestock industry, supporting more than 40 million head of livestock in Canada, the United States and China.
The software has applications for cow-calf producers, auction markets, feedlots and packers, and the company has been in operation since 1999, based in Edmonton.
The new Viewtrak chief executive officer is Ted Power, who formed Trace Applications Inc., a software company involved in tracing metals for industrial use.
Hubert Lau, founder of another software and networking company, is vice-president for technology.
Wilson is head of the investor group that bought Viewtrak and will be represented on its board by David Richardson, president of Prairie Grain Merchant Corp., which is Wilson’s private merchant bank.
Wilson is also chair of Canoe Financial, an investment management firm with more than $1.6 billion in assets, and is founder of FirstEnergy Capital Corp. He is known as well for his role on the Dragon’s Den television show.
