Forbes Shire Council is partnering with StockLive in a move to take the Central West Livestock Exchange (CWLE) online.
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With the challenges and restrictions on physical attendance presented by the current COVID-19 environment, 2020 has been a difficult year, which also followed a four-year drought.
The saleyards will benefit from increased exposure of the region's high quality livestock to a broad range of buyers, both locally and interstate, through interfacing the live sales at CWLE on the Stocklive online platform.
Councillors, general manager Steve Loane and all operating agents have expressed their excitement at the proposal of CWLE moving to include online sales next year.
"The platform ensures that vendors and agents have the opportunity to present and promote their livestock to a larger buying market," general manager Steve Loane said.
"It also increases the buyers' ability to get to our sales and to be able to watch their livestock be sold in real time, which is a huge bonus."
The Central West Livestock Exchange was awarded the coveted Australian Livestock Markets Association Animal Welfare Award in 2019 and has recently undergone a $4 million expansion.
The CWLE is a state-of-the-art facility for buying and selling cattle, sheep and pigs with 105,000 cattle and 1,466,900 sheep throughput at the facility each year, while contributing to the Forbes economy and supporting many jobs in agriculture.
