Farming entrepreneur William Hinton has won a competition to find Britain’s top farming talent by bagging £10,000 towards his business idea.

The 20-year-old from Warminster was featured on the Farmers Apprentice web TV series, which is run by Farmers Weekly and saw Mr Hinton go head-to-head with nine other aspiring farmers at a farming ‘boot camp’.

As in the hit BBC 1 show The Apprentice, competitors were tested through a range of real-life farm tasks from developing a mobile app for farmers to overhauling a combine and getting cows ready for showing.

Mr Hinton said: “Mentally and emotionally, the process was draining and you didn’t know how well you were doing and about three or four competitors had animal farming backgrounds.”

The University of Reading student, who is a first generation farmer, initially became inspired by agriculture aged four when he was bought a farming set by his parents and his winning business idea stemmed from his work at his aunt’s milk farm in Malmesbury.

He said: “Boot camp gave me the headspace to come up with the idea of milking sheep and processing the milk. Sheep milk is a niche product and has a potentially huge market with it being suitable for lactose-intolerant people.

“I would rather cut out the processor and make the cheese myself and purchase sheep milk from other farmers and then aim for mainstream supermarkets.”

Alongside his studies, Mr Hinton hopes that his business plan will be running in the next two years.

He said: “My plan is to import some Friesland ewe lambs and buy the equipment with the help of the prize money and investors.”

“However, the capital investment in sheep milking is a lot more than £10,000 and so I’m looking for more investors at the moment, including investing my own money, so hopefully my idea will be up and running by 2016.”