# Feedstock Sourcing API

*/Opportunities/Feedstock_Sourcing_API*

## Opportunity Overview

**Wedge**: Target US-based renewable diesel producers sourcing Used Cooking Oil first. This specific feedstock features acute demand, volatile pricing, and a highly fragmented network of regional collectors that desperately needs aggregation to ensure reliable volume. After securing liquidity in this niche, expand into agricultural residues and tallow, then scale outward to serve bioplastics manufacturers.
**Timing**: Stringent regulatory mandates like the US IRA credits and EU ReFuelEU now require granular lifecycle carbon tracking and provenance data for feedstocks, while LLMs enable automated extraction and standardization of this compliance data from messy supplier documents.
**Why This I C P**: Renewable diesel and Sustainable Aviation Fuel producers operate continuous-flow facilities that face existential downtime risk and immediate regulatory pressure to secure verified, low-carbon feedstocks, driving high willingness to pay for supply reliability.
**Size Of Prize**: There are roughly 1,200 advanced biofuel and biomanufacturing facilities globally spending an average of $500,000 annually on feedstock procurement operations, broker fees, and compliance audits, yielding a $600M annual addressable market for an API-driven procurement layer.
**Gap Narrative**: Refineries producing biofuels and sustainable chemicals face a highly fragmented supply chain for waste and bio-based feedstocks. Current procurement relies on manual broker networks and phone calls, lacking real-time availability, pricing transparency, and automated compliance tracking for sustainability certifications.
**Defensibility**: Defensibility stems from structural workflow lock-in and a two-sided data network effect. Once embedded into a refinery ERP for daily programmatic procurement, switching costs become prohibitive, while the aggregated, localized pricing and supply data compounds into an exclusive liquidity pool that competitors cannot easily replicate.
**Why This Thesis**: An API-first software approach embeds directly into the existing ERP and production planning systems of large refineries, enabling programmatic procurement and automated compliance routing without forcing operations teams to adopt a separate marketplace interface.

## Opportunity Linked Thesis

**Thesis**: [Software](/Theses/Software)

## Opportunity Linked I C P

**Icp**: [Biofuel Producer](/CompanyTypes/Biofuel_Producer)

## Opportunity Market Sizing

_Illustrative — target and order-of-magnitude estimate figures, not an achieved track record (this Thing is concept-stage)._

**S A M**: ~$150M-250M North American and European advanced biofuel facilities
**S O M**: ~$15M-30M
**T A M**: ~10,000 global biofuel producers and feedstock traders × ~$40k-60k/yr platform spend ≈ ~$400M-600M
**Growth Rate**: ~18-25%/yr, driven by rapidly expanding sustainable aviation fuel mandates and severe competition for traceable waste feedstocks
**Paid Comparable Spend**: ~$100k-300k/yr on traditional feedstock brokers, commodity data subscriptions, and manual procurement headcount

## Opportunity Incumbents

- [SAP Ariba](/Products/SAP_Ariba) — Tool
- [Argus Media APIs](/Products/Argus_Media_APIs) — Tool
- [Traditional Commodity Brokers](/Products/Traditional_Commodity_Brokers) — Service
- [Internal Procurement Sheets](/Products/Internal_Procurement_Sheets) — Spreadsheet
- [Feedstock Sourcing Consultants](/Products/Feedstock_Sourcing_Consultants) — Service
- [Eka Software Solutions](/Products/Eka_Software_Solutions) — Tool

## Opportunity Win Conditions

**Kill Thresholds**:
- Less than 20% of beta users execute a live contract within 45 days
- Customer Acquisition Cost exceeds $15k after 90 days
- Day 30 active API usage retention falls below 40%
- Average contract value secured remains under $20k per year
**Leading Metrics**:
- Time from API key generation to first successful data query
- Number of active feedstock pricing endpoints queried per week
- Conversion rate from data discovery to initiated procurement contract
- Volume of traceable waste feedstock tonnage sourced via API
- Weekly API error rate due to sparse inventory data
**What Proves Right**: Biofuel producers integrate the API directly into their procurement dashboards and execute at least five feedstock contracts per month through the platform. Day 30 API call volume grows by 15 percent week-over-week as traders rely on real-time pricing and availability data. Early adopters convert from pilot programs to $40k annual contracts within 60 days to retain access to premium traceable waste feedstock endpoints.
**What Proves Wrong**: Procurement teams refuse to trust automated API data over their established relationships with traditional commodity brokers. The available data volume on traceable waste feedstocks proves too sparse to support reliable programmatic sourcing. Sales cycles extend beyond six months as buyers demand custom integrations that mirror rigid internal procurement sheets rather than standard REST architecture.

## Opportunity Build Profile

**Hardest Part**: Normalizing inventory, quality assay, and pricing data from offline suppliers who communicate exclusively via PDF, email, and WhatsApp into a reliable, real-time queryable schema.
**Min Viable Scope**: Support exactly one feedstock category and only spot purchasing transactions based on volume, location, and primary quality spec. Exclude logistics execution, multi-commodity routing, and long-term contract settlement.
**Cold Start Problem**: Buyers require a liquid supply pool to justify API integration, but suppliers refuse to digitize inventory without immediate buyer volume. Break this by onboarding three anchor buyers and manually scraping their existing supplier email threads via LLMs to seed the initial supply graph.
**Time To First Value**: 1-2 weeks to map buyer procurement schemas to the API and complete the first automated query-to-quote cycle.
**Data Moat Available**: true
**Technical Difficulty**: High

## Neighborhood

### Where the gap lives

- [Petrochemical refineries](/Customers/Petrochemical_refineries) — latent gap · Customers

### Incumbent in

- [Eka Software](/Products/Eka_Software) — incumbent in · Products
- [Argus Media APIs](/Products/Argus_Media_APIs) — incumbent in · Products
- [Traditional Commodity Brokers](/Products/Traditional_Commodity_Brokers) — incumbent in · Products
- [Internal Procurement Sheets](/Products/Internal_Procurement_Sheets) — incumbent in · Products
- [SAP Ariba](/Products/SAP_Ariba) — incumbent in · Products
- [Feedstock Sourcing Consultants](/Products/Feedstock_Sourcing_Consultants) — incumbent in · Products

### Applies thesis

- [Biofuel Producer](/CompanyTypes/Biofuel_Producer) — applies thesis · CompanyTypes

### Embodies

- [Software](/Theses/Software) — embodies · Theses

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