Sydney Fish Market, which operates in one of the world’s most traditional industries, is set to transform the way it trades seafood by delivering a new digital trading platform that has the potential to fundamentally change the way the $3 billion Australian seafood industry operates.
Sydney Fish Market has signed a landmark agreement with Sydney-based agri-technology business ShoreTrade to roll out the platform, which will facilitate a national B2B online marketplace. It will hold an exclusive license in the fisheries sector to ShoreTrade’s award-winning technology in Australia and New Zealand.
The platform will complement the Market’s benchmark physical auction, which is set to be vastly upgradedwhen the new Sydney Fish Market building on Blackwattle Bay opens in 2024.
The opt-in platform will connect more sellers to more buyers across the country, and in doing so, will provide access to a huge variety, quality and volume of species. Sydney Fish Market’s new online seafood marketplace will facilitate trading 24 hours a day, seven days a week and transform the seafood trading experience, offering valuable and transparent industry intelligence, including daily market pricing across both direct and auction trade, trading volumes and supply-and-demand data from across Australia and New Zealand.
Sydney Fish Market received funding from the NSW Government to help support the development of the trading platform. Minister for Agriculture Adam Marshall said the new platform would deliver best practice innovation to the state’s seafood industry.
NSW has world class seafood, with Sydney Fish Market the epicentre of our fresh and sustainable seafood industry. This investment by the NSW Government will support the Sydney Fish Market and their traditional suppliers to embrace a new level of market access and transparency,” Mr Marshall said.
“This digital expansion of the fish market will give buyers and sellers more power to get a fair price so more Aussie seafood end up on our plates. So whether it’s prawns from Pambula, snapper caught at Coffs Harbour or kingfish at Kingscliff, this digital marketplace will offer the best seafood at the click of a button.”
Sydney Fish Market CEO, Greg Dyer, says: “Sydney Fish Market has decades of experience in large-scale, high-quality seafood trading, and has played a significant role in sustainably growing Australia’s seafood industry. The new trading platform will create further growth opportunities for our company and for our traditional suppliers here in NSW, while attracting new operators from the wild caught and aquaculturesectors across the country.
“This game-changing modernisation of our operations will help Sydney Fish Market stay ahead of the curve,” Mr Dyer continued. “The technology will offer new functions, including presale ordering and supply, fixed priced selling for fishers and availability alerts for targeted species for buyers. The system will enable fishers to negotiate a price to go out and catch what buyers need – a reversal of the way the market currently works. The technology will help to stabilise the market and help the industry deal with the unexpected, like COVID-19, by providing multiple trading opportunities without sole reliance on the physical auction.”
Peter Manettas, founder of ShoreTrade, says: “ShoreTrade was founded to create a more robust trading environment for the industry. The ability to aggregate data sets including trade data, catchment data, customer market segmentation across multiple locations and species allows the technology to be used to create more sustainable ecosystems, more robust sales channels and transparency across the industry. We are enthused to collaborate with Sydney Fish Market to enhance our vision of a digital ecosystem for the industry that will become a leading light of digitisation within the Australian agribusiness sector.”
Sydney Fish Market is working closely with ShoreTrade on the platform integration, with a launch in early 2022
