Investor overview · October 2026
Know who you're putting a grower's load into before it's too late to get it back
Loadward is a product in development for Independent Grain and Cotton Trading Brokers.
The problem
Independent Grain and Cotton Trading Brokers
For independent grain and cotton brokers, when a buyer going under doesn't just cost the grower — it costs the broker who put them together.
- A string of Australian grain trading companies have gone insolvent in recent years, leaving growers unpaid and brokers wearing the fallout.
- One collapsed grain trader alone took debts of close to $19 million with it; another left around $7.5 million owed to unsecured creditors.
- Delayed payment is already flagged as one of the clearest signs a buyer is in trouble — by the time it shows up, the load is usually already gone.
In their own words
Real quotes from the people who have this problem
Delayed payments being one of the classic red flag signs when assessing the ability of your buyer to pay.
It is possible to take out counterparty insurance when selling grain, with a number of insurance companies offering this as a service that will provide some protection if the buyer goes bust.
The evidence
Researched before anything is built
How it scores
Based on 4 direct quotes from 4 independent public sites, each recorded with its source. Scores are 1–5, rated from that evidence.
Why now
What’s changed
- 01
An industry body's own insolvency-tracking page lists five separate collapsed grain trading companies in recent years, not one isolated incident.
- 02
Counterparty insurance products already exist specifically for grain sales, showing the market takes buyer-default risk seriously enough to insure against it, but insurance alone doesn't stop a broker from committing a load to a buyer who was already in trouble.
The product
Loadward
Loadward is a plain-English check on a specific buyer, run before you commit a grower's load to them. Enter the buyer's business name or ABN and get back what the public record actually shows — company status, court judgments, director history and known insolvency notices — instead of trading on reputation and hoping for the best.
- 01
Enter the buyer's business name or ABN before you commit a grower's load to them.
- 02
We pull together what the public record shows — ASIC company status, court judgments, director history, and known insolvency or industry warning notices.
- 03
You get a plain verdict within a day: clear, flagged, or thin history — before the load leaves the farm, not after the buyer's gone quiet.
Market size
TAM, SAM and SOM
- TAMTotal market
- A$780,000 a yearAn assumed 10,000 grain and cotton trades brokered annually across Australia (a working estimate for a fragmented, broker-driven national grain and cotton trade) at a A$79 check applied to roughly 10% of trades where the buyer is new or unfamiliar. North Queensland Register
- SAMServiceable market
- A$390,000 a yearAbout half that population: brokers trading with buyers outside the handful of large, well-known grain companies where credit risk is already assumed to be low.
- SOMObtainable in 3 years
- A$11,700 a year3% of that serviceable population checking a buyer within three years.
The 10,000-trade estimate, the 10% new-buyer share, the 50% SAM share, the A$79 price and the 3% adoption share are all assumptions, not validated figures. No published figure for the total number of broker-arranged grain and cotton trades in Australia was found.
Competition
What they use today, and where it falls short
| Today’s option | Checks this specific buyer before you commit | Written for a grain or cotton trade, not generic credit | One-off price, no subscription | Plain verdict, not a raw credit score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Counterparty insuranceDoesn't tell a broker whether to commit the load to this buyer in the first place, and typically suits larger, ongoing trading relationships rather than a one-off check. | No | Yes | Partly | No |
| General business credit-check bureausBuilt for general trade credit, not written in grain and cotton trading terms, and priced as an ongoing subscription rather than a single pre-trade check. | Partly | No | Yes | Partly |
| Asking around the industry networkOnly as good as who you happen to know, and says nothing about a buyer nobody in your network has dealt with yet. | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| LLoadwardchecks the one buyer you're about to trade with, in plain grain-and-cotton terms, for a single fee before you commit the load — not a subscription, and not a guess based on who you happen to know. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Business model
One-off fee per buyer checked
Working price, not yet validated — a small fraction of the value of a single typical load.
A Loadward check costs a fraction of one collapsed buyer's debts
Loadward can't guarantee a buyer never defaults, but shows how little it has to catch to be worth it. North Queensland Register
Go to market
How we reach them
- NowThe founding-access page is live, with a Google search ad campaign built around grain and cotton buyer credit-risk searches.
- NextGrain and cotton industry forums and grower groups, where counterparty risk is already an active, recurring topic after each new collapse.
- LaterAn ongoing watchlist tier for brokers who want their regular buyers monitored, not just checked once.
Where we are
Validating demand before building
- Problem researchReal complaints collected from public sources and scored
- Demand test · nowFounding-member applications open at loadward.thinksimple.app, with a targeted search ad campaign built for it
- BuildOnly if the demand test shows people will sign up
Signup numbers will be shared here once there are enough to mean something.
Get in touch
Interested in backing Loadward?
We’re happy to talk through the research, the demand test and the plan.
For information only. This is not an offer of securities or financial advice. Loadward is in development; nothing described here is available yet. Market figures and charts are estimates built from the sources shown.