Commodity Pools
During the past twenty years, the nature of commodity pools in Australia has changed considerably from single desk marketing authorities to individual pools run by a variety of managers.
Commodity pools allow individual producers to combine some or all of their commodity production into a pool (ie they pool together grain, or sugar) generally in order to achieve benefits of scale or diversifying their pricing alternatives.
Some key advantages in marketing through commodity pools include:
Access to markets unattainable as an individual;
Access to skills of a professional commodity marketer/risk manager;
To gain scale to allow lower cost;
Access (via the pool) to a variety of derivative instruments not otherwise available.
