LEADING agribusiness Emerald Grain has developed an industry-first grain contracting tool that provides live pricing and enables growers to sell directly from their mobile phones at any time of the year.
Grain Mate is a mobile-friendly grain pricing and contracting program that directly links to Emerald's internal grain pricing system, enabling growers to immediately contract at the published price through the one platform.
Emerald Grain chairman and managing director John Murray said Grain Mate's unique ability to share live data allowed Emerald to guarantee the price offered to the grower.
"Grain Mate basically allows growers to access our proprietary grain trading system, meaning growers see the same prices our traders see,'' he said.
This ensures the price published on Grain Mate is the price we honour.
"Most grain companies offer price discovery options but they don't have the ability to link this step to a sales contract, which typically involves logging in to a separate system or contacting a grain buyer."
It's during this second step that growers can discover the price has changed or is no longer available.
"Grain Mate's real-time pricing and contracting ability overcomes this cumbersome and often frustrating process because growers can access our current market price and then choose to sell immediately," he said.
The published price on Grain Mate is accessible for five minutes, which is sufficient time for growers to execute a sales contract.
The program's integration between price discovery and sales contracting is supported by other functionality, including access to historical pricing data, a 30-day trend graph, information on market conditions and the ability to set pricing preferences.
Grain Mate also allows growers to directly contact a grain merchant.
Emerald Grain chief information officer Graeme Hester said Grain Mate's responsive design ensured it was accessible on a mobile phone, a tablet or the desktop.
"No other grain company offers a similar program to Grain Mate on a mobile phone platform, which is the preferred device for consumers, including growers," Mr Hester said.
"This will be the first harvest that the current version of Grain Mate will be available and we expect its multi-device capability, particularly via mobile phone, will offer significant benefits to growers during the intensity of harvest time."
Emerald Grain will host information sessions about Grain Mate in coming months.
p More information: www.emeraldgrain. com.au.
