Ten Tigers has helped our grain operation grow through a well-balanced marketing program of all our grain types in the current season and beyond.
Ten Tigers has given me a greater understanding of our grain business through a fully transparent summary at the completion of each marketing season.
Ten Tigers has given our business confidence to expand grain production by allocating achievable pricing target levels on all our grain types.
Our business can better allocate time towards the production side knowing that Ten Tigers is managing our marketing in a professional, unemotional manner.
We have been using Ten Tigers for over thirteen years and have found their grain marketing approach very practical and consistent on a year-by-year basis. Ten Tigers sets up a strategy that suits your management, risk profile, costs of production and cash flow needs, and sticks to it.
It is very easy to be influenced and confused by the, at times conflicting, market intelligence reports. We find Ten Tigers sorts out and verifies all the information flowing in and presents it in an unbiased readable fashion.
I find their staff very approachable and professional and will return calls in a timely manner. Their dissemination of marketing information via grower meetings is very helpful and talking to them face-to-face helps with phone conversations through the year.
I would recommend Ten Tigers as a grain marketing consultant because of their presence and experience in this deregulated market.
Ten Tigers has been my grain marketing advisor now for a period of 17 years.
I have entrusted Chris Tonkin and his team to assist and direct me in the selling of my grains to suit my needs. With their experience, knowledge and regular contact and updates, I have been able to concentrate on the physical and practical side of farming without the added stress of watching the markets and possibly making wrong decisions.
Allowing Ten Tigers to be my “personal broker” has put me in a position where I can relax, travel and profit from my every day farming life.
In the seventeen years we have been working with Chris and his team there has been a huge transformation in grain marketing in our business. Ten Tigers has made these steps a comfortable journey instead of the hill climb they appear to be when we receive correspondence from all different grain identities and our legal obligations we need to meet. Ten Tigers has assisted us to achieve higher daily prices regularly with good communication and sound advice. Ten Tigers has been an important member of our business allowing us to concentrate on growing our grain with the knowledge that Ten Tigers is there to worry about the marketing, optimisation and filling of contracts. The very detailed information that is supplied to us makes record keeping and entering details into our accounting program very simple and quick.
If you want service and advice about grain and contracts, talk to Ten Tigers. They do all the work and run the business and get things done. I could not run my farm without them.
We use Ten Tigers for our grain marketing because they are easily contactable, very helpful and they significantly ease the burden of grain marketing, particularly at busy times such as harvest and seeding. ‘Tonks’ and his team encourage us to take a non-emotive, outcomes based grain marketing strategy that is not necessarily aiming for the top of the market but aiming for a solid result above what our budgeted prices are. By working with cash, pools and swaps we have been able to take some of the volatility out of grain prices. Daily text prices and regular market update emails keep you effortlessly informed and thinking about selling your crop. A phone call can be as brief as “don’t sell today” to a 20-minute discussion about your post seeding selling strategy. Using Ten Tigers has taken half a man out of our harvesting team by freeing my time up to remain more hands on. I don’t have to make rushed or un-informed decisions.
Ten Tigers has taken the highs and lows out of the grain market so a higher average price has been achieved. This helps the bottom line and helps our business grow. We have a lot of on farm storage so through Ten Tigers we have been able to access domestic markets that were previously unknown to us. Using Ten Tigers means we are able to accurately keep track of our position through the regular updates and newsletters. Reports are very comprehensive and assist with accountability.
Using Ten Tigers has given our grain marketing efforts more structure. We have planned hedge levels and definite price targets that to some extent reduce the emotional aspect of grain marketing. Since employing Ten Tigers we have found that pricing grain is less stressful because it is managed rather than ad hoc and decisions can be talked through so that we feel satisfied with the outcome. Chris Tonkin has always gone to great lengths to demonstrate transparency in operations.
With no industry affiliations we have a sense that Ten Tigers really is working for better outcomes for its clients and growers in general. Ten Tigers is acting as a grower advocate against industry bureaucracy and over regulation. We feel confident knowing that the person we talk to at Ten Tigers also has the attention of the major buyers in the industry.
Because of the volume of tons that Ten Tigers represent we have shared in price premiums when selling grain as part of a bigger parcel, something we couldn’t achieve on our own. Our search for grain marketing satisfaction has led to an evolution of what that means. We don’t even try to pick the top of the market any more, and yet still sleep soundly... well, I would if I wasn’t worrying about the bloody sheep.
We decided to engage the services of Ten Tigers because we found we were becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the grain marketing decisions we had to make. We were sometimes making poor decisions because we had become indecisive and didn’t have clear target prices in place. We have found the staff at Ten Tigers an absolute pleasure to deal with. They are proactive in keeping lines of communication open and the paperwork they provide us with is easy to understand and very useful. The advice Ten Tigers has provided exactly what we needed. They have helped us set and reach targets and we have already seen the benefits of the grain marketing strategies they helped us put in place.
After struggling with our marketing strategy for years, not having a plan, we realised something needed to change. We didn't have the time, expertise or knowledge to do both the practical farming and marketing parts of our business. We had heard about Ten Tigers from friends and decided to call Chris and have a talk. Both Christine and I were impressed with what Ten Tigers had to offer. We signed up and have been with them for 12 years.
Our marketing has a strategy, the weak link is still me but we have a strategy. Forward sell, swaps, optimising contracts both wheat and canola. Ten Tigers deal with buyers daily and their ability to put together parcels of grain to meet their requirements reflects in both greater market access and in the price we get, win win.
What sets Ten Tigers apart from the others is Chris' passion for marketing and making my business more money, a passion that the team all share. I still have lots to learn and marketing seems to change all the time, but that is where Ten Tigers does its thing. Only dumb question is the one you don't ask! We are happy to recommend Ten Tigers to anyone no matter where you are with your marketing strategy. Newsletter and text messages also a great source of info and help us understand what and why things happen. Good job Ten Tigers.
Ten Tigers is a business that specialises in grain marketing and consulting. We use Ten Tigers to help us achieve the best price for our grain, to find out what is happening in the world’s grain market to date and to help with marketing strategies. The best thing is, all this can be achieved by just a few text messages per day and / or a quick phone call while I stay busy growing as much grain as I can. I find them a great deal of benefit to our grain farming business.
