MeteoGroup has forecasters all over the world.
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is set to replace Met Office with private weather company MeteoGroup after being the media house weather forecaster for 94 years.
The announcement from the BBC marks the end of nearly a century of partnership between the state-owned Met Office and the broadcaster after the former lost its contract in August 2015.
MeteoGroup claims to be the UK’s largest private sector weather business and the European market leader.
MeteoGroup, owned by the U.S. global growth equity firm General Atlantic, will supply BBC Weather forecasts from the spring of 2017.
MeteoGroup chairman Richard Sadler said: “MeteoGroup is honoured to have been chosen to partner with the world’s leading broadcaster”.
“This decision will mean we can further modernise our weather forecasting making the most of new technology and science to bring our audiences an even better service”, the BBC say in a statement.
It started out as MeteoConsult in the Netherlands in 1986 and established its London headquarters in 2005.
PA Group, which has shareholders including the owners of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror and regional newspaper publisher Johnston Press, sold MeteoGroup to General Atlantic for €190m (164m) in 2013.
Project Director BBC Weather procurement Nigel Charters said he is “extremely pleased” about the replacement.
“You may not have heard of MeteoGroup, but it has more customers in the United Kingdom than any other commercial weather company”, said Charters.
The corporation will still work closely with the Met Office on severe weather warnings.
The BBC announced last year it was no longer considering the Met Office in an open tender process for a new five-year contract to supply radio and TV weather reports to the broadcaster beginning in the autumn of 2016.
The BBC announced a year ago that the Met Office, Britain’s national weather service that has been supplying its forecasts since 1922, had not made it into final rounds of the tendering process.
“We have taken forward the strongest bid based on best possible service and value for money for the licence fee payer”, said Charters.
Steve Noyes, Met Office operations and customer services director, said at the time that the news was “disappointing”.
BBC weather presenters now employed by the Met Office, such as Tomasz Schafernaker and Helen Willetts, will have the option of transferring to the BBC, the corporation said.
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“Some things won’t change, though”.
