Three decades after computerised livestock selling became a national reality, AuctionsPlus is marking its 30th anniversary with expectations of trading 20 per cent of Australia’s store and prime sheep and cattle trade within three years.
That sort of lift in turnover will represent a 300pc increase in cattle and roughly a twofold rise in sheep numbers currently sold through the internet-based marketing system.
Last year AuctionsPlus electronically traded $460 million worth of livestock, or about 394,000 head of cattle and 2.2m sheep.
Devised by computer boffins and cattlemen working with the University of New England in the late 1970s, the new Computer Aided Livestock Marketing (CALM) selling platform began its historic leap into the future with trial sales in 1986 and regular weekly auctions from July 1987 - well before the internet age or mobile phones.
Sales relied on stock description data sent out by telex and fax and bids via computers using early telephone dial-up technology.
Among the big attractions of computerised sales for vendors, then and now, has been livestock not needing to leave the paddock unless they sell, and freight costs being covered by the buyer.
“It’s taken us about 30 years to really get traction, but in the past few years we have been on the road map with a lot more producers,” said AuctionsPlus chief executive officer, Anna Speer.
She tipped a rapidly evolving livestock marketing landscape in the next 10 to 20 years, relying increasingly on electronic selling and a limited network of centralised super-sized saleyard sites.
High transport costs, livestock handling responsibilities, and costly workplace safety regulations were making traditional district sales uneconomic and less competitive for vendors who wanted prices to truly reflect stock values in the broader marketplace.
“Freight costs alone are a huge expense to producers,” Ms Speer said.
“And once you’ve spent all that money getting animals to a saleyard, you’re stuck - you can’t really afford to take them home again if they don’t make the price you expected.”
Other persuasive factors supporting electronic selling include the price difference in offering cattle via AuctionsPlus at $6.50 a head compared with an average $15 in saleyards, or 70 cents/head for sheep against about $1 in most yards.
Stock welfare and quality are also safeguarded with electronic sales as animals are loaded, transported just once and avoid the stress of frantic saleyard conditions.
“There are still many people with very little or no idea about AuctionsPlus,” she said.
“However our quite collaborative approach with producers and agents in recent times - rather than saying this is how you should be selling - seems to have translated into a significant increase in turnover.”
Renamed AuctionsPlus in 2000, the selling platform accounted for about 5pc of all non-stud cattle sold publicly last year and almost 8pc of sheep.
The business, now jointly owned by selling agency groups Landmark, Elders and Ruralco, also runs regular machinery clearance auctions, wool sales, water rights sales and it even auctions bee hive sites on NSW public lands.
“Our aim is to see our livestock sale market share get up to 20pc in the next couple of years,” Ms Speer said.
“Red meat is also an interesting area we’d like to look at, although we don’t want to chase too many opportunities until we build up our livestock turnover.
“There are so many different areas we could be tapping into, including looking at different ways for processors and lot feeders to procure stock through our platform.
“However, in the meantime we’ve got a lot more of our existing business to develop - we only handle four to five per cent of the total cattle market at present.”
AuctionsPlus strongest support bases are Queensland, NSW and Victoria, although pockets of particularly strong support have emerged in remote northern Western Australia and the Northern Territory where producers can sell well before trucking cattle 900 kilometres to buyers.
