Australia-based digital seafood marketplace ShoreTrade has raised USD 8 million (EUR 6.7 million) in funding to aid its expansion plans in Asia and the United States, Australian Financial Review reported.
The latest round was led by Investible and Luxem and participated in by Singapore investment manager Vulpes. The funds will help ShoreTrade expand to China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, and the U.S.
“We plan to be quite heavily established across [those] six strategic areas with satellite networks and we’ll continue to vertically integrate the supply chain with investments in those areas,” ShoreTrade Founder Peter Manettas said.
In 2018, the start-up successfully raised USD 2 million (EUR 1.68 million) to launch a trading platform aiming to cut out middlemen in the supply chain and allow fishermen to sell their catch directly to buyers.
Purchases by wholesalers through the platform ocassionally reach as high as USD 60,000 (EUR 50,420) per deal. Local restaurants also buy a few hundred dollars of seafood via the platform daily, Manettas said.
“It has a wide spectrum of users ... COVID accelerated the growth of the platform because people had to find new markets to push their product into, when their usual markets fell out from underneath them,” he said, adding that there are under 500 registered fishermen on ShoreTrade.
In coming weeks, the platform will add a feature it is developing to help buyers request which products they are looking for.
Manettas’ bigger aim is to digitize the whole fishing supply chain. An investment fund he created is looking for potential opportunities to invest in companies operating in seafood infrastructure or digital aquaculture fields. The investments then will be grouped into one entity and taken public.
“I don’t think there’s an Australian who wouldn’t pull USD 5.00 [EUR 4.20] from their pockets to support the seafood industry,” Manettas said. “ShoreTrade increases the profits for fishermen and aquaculture farmers, as well as increasing traceability from farm to fork.”
