Pulpexchange.com – a new generation of Pulp Trading
In the production of high-quality pulp, non-prime-pulp occasionally occurs as a by-product. Although there is still a market for this by-product, companies often find it difficult to find buyers or have to sell it at significantly lower prices. Since production is unpredictable or projectable, companies cannot enter into supply contracts, but non-prime pulp is usually sold locally to intermediaries. The same intermediaries usually achieve very profitable margins when they sell the non-prime pulp to paper manufacturers or other companies that need pulp.
Metsä Fibre sold exclusively through analogue channels until 2014. Cumbersome, not agile and limited to a very small circle of buyers. Together with HYVE, a solution was to be developed to transfer the pulp trade into a digital world.
HYVE’s business idea is to change the market for non-prime pulp by establishing a trading platform that directly connects suppliers and buyers and cuts high margins for intermediaries. On the platform, companies should offer their by-products directly to the buyers they need. The supplying companies set an initial price and the purchasing companies can place a bid. There should also be an option for direct buying. The platform aimed to generate revenue through a small commission for each pulp sold online through the platform.
In one process the screens were connected to a clickable dummy to enable testing of the interaction experience. The steps consisted of:
- Wireframing,
- Design,
- Prototyping,
- Entwicklung,
- High fidelity presentation of the product according to UI & UX principles and presentation of the relevant functions based on the validated wireframes
Pulpexchange created a kind of ebay for pulp and a real digitization project. HYVE’s successful ingredients:
- Needs analysis together with Metsä Fibre
- Market analysis study
- Business model development
- Wireframing the platform
- Clickable Dummy for testing
- Software development
