Sydney Fish Market has signed an agreement with Sydney-based agri-technology business ShoreTrade to roll out the platform, a B2B online marketplace.

Sydney Fish Market says it will hold an exclusive license in the fisheries sector to ShoreTrade’s technology in Australia and New Zealand. The platform will complement the Market’s benchmark physical auction, which will be rehauled when the new Sydney Fish Market building on Blackwattle Bay opens in 2024.

The opt-in platform will connect more sellers and buyers, and in doing so, will provide access to a wider variety 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.

It will offer industry intelligence, including daily market pricing across both direct and auction trade and trading volumes and supply-and-demand data in Australia and New Zealand.

“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,” claims Sydney Fish Market CEO Greg Dyer. “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 aquaculture sectors across the country.”

“It 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,” Dyer explains.

“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,” says ShoreTrade founder Peter Manettas.

The NSW government funded Sydney Fish Market to 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,” Marshall notes.

“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.”

“Whether it’s prawns from Pambula, snapper caught at Coffs Harbour or kingfish at Kingscliff, this digital marketplace will offer the best seafood at a click,” Marshall concludes.

Sydney Fish Market is working with ShoreTrade on the platform integration, with a launch in early 2022.