image expired

GRAINMATE offers all the essential market information to make informed selling decisions, including futures and Forex prices, but uniquely enables users to take action and market their grain and oilseeds direct - 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The quick and easy to use platform ensures all relevant information loads quickly and is clearly presented on a mobile phone screen. Simple swipe actions intuitively move between the screens, to compare details and make more effective selling decisions.

Keith Davies of Glencore highlighted that with the incredibly volatile grain markets this season, it has been more important than ever for farmers to be aware and updated of price fluctuations, and be able to trade whenever they want.

“Over the past 10 years the success and ever-increasing level of sales on GRAINMAN has proven that internet trading has a highly important role in grain marketing,” he said. “Now farmers have been freed from their desktops and can get all the same advantages from their mobile phone whilst on the move.”     

Berkshire Farm Manager, Geoff Hopkins, reports the GRAINMATE app has been invaluable this year in helping him to market over 3000 tonnes of Panorama wheat from Mayfield Farm in Compton. With no permanent storage on the 800-hectare arable and dairy farm, he’s reliant on being able to pick any high points in the market to maximise his returns.

“I have been a real advocate of internet trading on GRAINMAN, but it did mean that I had to be close to the office if any market notifications came through, and there was always the risk we’d miss an opportunity,” he recalled. “Now I can do it all straightaway from my mobile. It’s so much more convenient and gives me confidence that I’m not going to miss a sale at my chosen target price.”

Mr Hopkins strategy is typically to set a desired price, and then assess market movements and fluctuations when he received an email or text message that it had been achieved; if the market looks right, he’ll make the sale. “It really has been incredibly easy to set up and use, and it has enabled us to make some very good selling decisions with our wheat this season.”

A further advantage this season has been the rapid feedback of grain quality monitoring, with the results of every sample quickly available in his GRAINMAN account. “Like many growers we harvested our worst affected fields first, so as the later crops came in we could see the quality rising and were able to assess marketing opportunities,” he added. The farms location with fast access to the south coast ports makes direct export the least cost option for transport and storage. 

“The stop-start harvest has been fortuitous in helping to get grain shifted to market out of the limited temporary on-farm storage; we’ve been impressed with the smooth organisation of transport movement by Glencore. In previous years we have had to hold up combining because of lack of space, which could have been a disaster this year.”      

The new GRAINMATE app is now available for download from the iTunes App Store or android app stores.  Over 450 farmers have already downloaded the app, extending the reach of GRAINMAN - where the combined acreage of registered farmers now equates to around 60% of the entire UK grain production.

Growers who are not yet registered with GRAINMAN will need to do so before GRAINMATE can be used, but thereafter the two systems will be fully integrated. Trades made on GRAINMATE will benefit from the same advantageous terms of 21-day payment.