Online livestock auction

Local agro start-up company, Remote Livestock
Marketing System has done transactions worth
US$3 million this year through its online livestock
marketing platform, a company official has said.
The company which runs an online livestock
auction created 18 months ago announced that it
had achieved bottom-line success since pilot
launch.
In an interview with Herald Business, RLMS
founder Mr Allister Banks said the platform has
managed to record maximum profits despite the
liquidity crunch that the country has been facing.
The online system is a catalogue based website
where RLMS agents upload pictures of livestock
together with critical data such as weight and age
and in-turn buyers bid for the livestock on offer.
Mr Banks said the project is set to benefit all
agricultural sectors ranging from A1 to
commercial farmers in a bid to link the buyers in
the diaspora and the local farmers.
"For the past 18 months the company has sold
livestock valued at more than US$3 million with
US$250 000 or 7 percent of that coming from
the Diaspora,"he said.
Mr Banks said "over the years I've seen that the
live auction can be a lottery as far as prices go.
The losses of weight and costs of transport to
and from the sale pens are significant, especially
for smaller players in the livestock industry and
so with the recent proliferation of new small scale
farmers in Zimbabwe, this issue is even more
pertinent."
He added that 67 percent of livestock successfully
assessed on the site is from small holder farmers
and the service is looking to benefit 3 530 families
in the coming five to six years.
"RLMS gets a commission on each livestock sold
through their system and through trained agents,
also offers physicals livestock assessments on
behalf of clients to support the online side of
things. Therefore since we started the online
version of purchasing we have managed to
contribute in creating employment as well as
introducing technology to agriculture," he said.
RLMS pitched and won the ZOL start-up challenge
in 2012 and has successfully raised additional
funding to improve.
The online marketing company is planning to
cover the whole nation in the next five years and
so far it has put 30 mobile livestock assessing
agents.
"We want to cover all provinces, introducing this
initiative of online livestock purchasing and we
have injected a lot of capital to make sure the
project reaches everyone in Zimbabwe," he
added.
He said