National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) Financial Third Party Feasibility (2014)
The purpose of this study was to provide a review of the NLIS Financial Third Party (FTP) pilot and make recommendations on pilot commercialisation. NLIS is Australia’s system for identification and tracing of livestock. To date the system has been applied to beef and dairy cattle. In addition to NLIS’s core role in traceability and food safety, a FTP pilot has been operated by NLIS Ltd since 2007. The purpose of the FTP pilot was to determine whether voluntary provision of information on the financial status of cattle could be used by the livestock sector to improve access to, and lower the cost of, capital. The Australian beef and dairy livestock sector is characterised by 86,000 livestock operations (PICs) stocking between $11 billion and $16.5 billion in cattle assets. Lending against livestock assets is of interest to major banks, regional banks, specialist lenders and proprietary software providers. The study was completed by Michael Clarke, Richard Herbst and Anne Nolan.