Beeswinkel is a company owned by cattle farmers with 100 years worth of combined experience in livestock trading. We undertook a strategic audit in 2017 after which we listed all the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities in the livestock trading sector.

After compiling a complete list of problems facing both buyers and sellers in terms of profitability, market access, fair price discovery and efficient transfer of ownership, we looked for answers in what the Fourth Industrial Revolution has to offer.

Since transparency is fundamental, we chose the name ‘Beeswinkel’. Translated into English it means ‘Cattle Shop’. Doing business through Beeswinkel should be as transparent as looking through a shop window. With the transformation of industries and new technology brought to us by the fourth industrial revolution, we developed the Beeswinkel electronic trading platform.

We learned a lot from blockchain and distributed ledgers to:

• Create a bottom-up design – to facilitate asset transfer from those who own them to those who value them most by means of a trusted third party.
• Creating awareness so those who would value an asset most, need to be aware of its availability (even amongst 1000’s of listings).
• Creating an efficient price discovery process that will lead to the quickest fair-value trade execution possible by using trigger trading and smart contract functions.
• Being impartial and transparent to the extent where our platform does not favour one participant over another.
• Focussing on participation over observation, thus ensuring that those taking part, are doing so with the intent to complete a transaction.
• The Beeswinkel platform is a technology first for agriculture and an intelligent system that operates without any constraints.
• We intend to stay ahead of the pack in terms of technology firsts and will keep on improving and expanding our functions and capabilities.