GDT Events make changes to encourage more supply

10-Jul-2018 - Last updated on 10-Jul-2018 at 08:18 GMT

The changes will be implemented in the coming months as system enhancements are completed. Pic: ©Getty Images/Free law

The GDT (Global Dairy Trade) Events Oversight Board has approved two rule changes to encourage a wider range of sellers to offer dairy ingredients on the auction platform to expand the breadth of regional published prices.

The changes will enable sellers to join the platform while retaining a level of privacy over their commercially sensitive data.

Director of GDT, Eric Hansen, said the changes are a step toward expanding the supply on GDT Events by further reducing barriers to entry for sellers.

“The changes received unanimous support from all members of the Oversight Board, which includes representatives of buyers, sellers and financial market participants,” Hansen said.

Publishing prices

The first change will enable an average winning price to be published as a substitute, or in addition to the publication of each seller’s individual winning prices.

This will enable sellers to join GDT Events and have their published winning prices combined with other seller prices within a regional average, rather than necessarily needing to publish each seller’s individual winning price.

Current sellers Amul, Arla, Arla Foods Ingredients and Fonterra have confirmed they will continue to publish their individual product winning prices.

The second change closes a loophole where a restricted bidder can still view a product’s offer quantity and starting price in the private log-in section of the information website, despite a seller restricting that bidder from bidding on one or more of its products.

This approach will avoid the potential for bidder confusion and reduce anti-trust risk as it will prevent a bidder who produces and/or trades the same type of product outside of GDT to access sensitive information. The change will have no impact on public transparency as pre-event data is not displayed on the public section of the website.

Price transparency

Hansen said both changes will increase the attractiveness of GDT Events to sellers, and will enable GDT to bring the benefits of price transparency to a wider range of core dairy ingredients and more supply regions, such as Europe and the US.

The full application of the changes will be implemented in the coming months as system enhancements are completed.