Northern Irish food safety expert wins major investment

The founder of one of the world's largest medical outsourcing firms is making a £2 million investment in a Northern Irish start-up that he says will revolutionise traceability in the global food chain.

Dr Richard Steeves, who built Synergy Health of Chorley in Lancashire, is making the investment in arc-net, a Belfast-headquartered specialist in food chain traceability and analytics.

arc-net was founded by Northern Ireland entrepreneur Kieran Kelly in 2014, and has offices in Edinburgh in addition to its Belfast base.

Its cloud-based platform enables food producers and retailers to assure customers of the provenance and authenticity of their products using Blockchain and DNA technology. It already counts some of the world's largest food producers amongst its clients.

A recent PWC report highlighted that food fraud costs the industry in excess of $40 billion a year. arc-net addresses this issue by authenticating and tracking food from creation through to consumption leveraging the power of Blockchain's security.

Mr Kelly, chief executive of arc-net, says that the funding will enable the company to accelerate and support its rapid growth.

"Dr Richard Steeves has an incredible track-record, having built one of the largest medical outsourcing firms from scratch to sell it for more than $2 billion. He is a visionary in the truest sense of the word, and the fact that he shares our vision for arc-net is a massive endorsement of our service, our strategy, and the potential of our company," he said.

"arc-net's solution gives companies and brand owners the ability to have independent validation of their food quality. Our service also increases the information flow across the entire supply chain, which helps ensure authenticity, quality, traceability and compliance, based on Blockchain technology. We see significant demand for what we have to offer and this investment will put us in a very strong position to capitalise on that."