Pricing App

Challenge

With a background in farming and an AgScience degree, it was inevitable that Rob Kelly would end up back on the land after three years travelling.

What he didn’t count on was the inequitable situation he found himself in when seeking financing. Lenders were prepared to give him less to run livestock than to farm grain, in part because of a lack of current market information. That’s when the wheels started to turn.

To Rob there were three problems: livestock farmers needed information to make better decisions, buyers needed their prices out and financiers needed market data.

He’d had experience in pricing tools, having been involved in development of CBH Group’s DailyGrain price discovery service for the grain industry. He thought one app that provided quick and easy access to pricing would solve all three problems, so he set about making it happen.

Solution

 He formed LIVEstock Pricing in 2018 and developed an app prototype to prove it would deliver the required functionality. As luck would have it, midway through the year the ACCC released a report highlighting the lack of transparency in the Australian cattle market, taking the app from a locally focused tool to a national platform.

LIVEstock Pricing shows accurate buyer prices across Australia, anywhere at any time. Users can search by location, stock type and more, save favourite searches for future use and set up pricing alerts. The app makes it simple to sort and compare prices and keep up to date with all the latest industry news.

Rob says it’s not intended to remove stock agents from the buying process, and there are many reasons users have an interest in current

pricing. He likens it to sites like realestate.com, which give users an indication of the value of their own home based on other market offerings but doesn’t remove the need for a real estate agent.

Outcome

Rob took part in the AgriStart Harvest Accelerator program and launched the product after 12 months of development. He sees it as a supply chain management solution, as it takes fewer steps to get pricing to the right people. That means buyers no longer need to wait for saleyard reports to be broadcast — which is already historical information by that stage — and sellers can make better management decisions from current information, like when to hold or drop stock. An accurate portrayal of market information gives lenders a better starting point.

There’s potential for LIVEstock Pricing in other industries that feature many suppliers but enough competition at the buyer level that price matters, with Rob currently investigating the aquaculture and horticulture markets.