BioExchange: National Biomass Trading Platform
Overview of Our Client
Our client was a European company developing a national-level digital marketplace for biomass trading. The organization needed an online exchange where buyers and sellers could participate in trades of wooden chips while managing orders, payments, and related trading processes.
The platform also had to support controls and processes required for compliance with government services.
SCAND was engaged to develop the initial MVP within a highly compressed 3.5-month timeframe. Following the MVP release on production, the SCAND development team continued supporting the platform through certification, ongoing releases, and new feature development.
- Region: Europe
- Industry: Energy / Biomass Trading
- Timeline: 3.5 months for MVP
Challenge
The client needed to establish a national-level online energy exchange capable of supporting real trading activity between biomass buyers and sellers. Therefore, the main challenges included:
- Developing and providing a production-ready MVP within only 3.5 months
- Creating an online trading environment for biomass transactions
- Supporting the complete lifecycle of trading orders
- Implementing automated matching and background trading-state processing
- Developing a high accuracy matching engine handling a large number of concurrent requests during peak trading periods
- Managing security funds and payments
- Supporting controls and processes required for compliance with government services
- Providing separate client and back-office functionality for different user groups
- Building a scalable cloud infrastructure capable of supporting a national-level service
- Integrating external email and SMS providers for operational communication
- Supporting internationalization for client-facing users
Main Goals
To create the BioExchange trading platform, we set the following objectives:
- Deliver the MVP within the required 3.5-month timeframe
- Build a national-level online exchange for biomass trading
- Enable buyers and sellers to register and participate in trading
- Implement order, deal, and payment lifecycle management
- Automate the matching process between buyers and sellers
- Provide back-office tools for platform operators
- Implement security fund management
- Support government compliance processes and controls
- Build a scalable AWS-based infrastructure
- Provide statistics and operational monitoring
- Establish a technical foundation for continued platform expansion
Project Overview
SCAND engineers developed BioExchange, a web-based biomass trading platform connecting buyers and sellers through an automated online marketplace.
The platform was divided into a Client Office for companies participating in trading and a Back Office for platform operators. Registered companies could complete onboarding, participate in trading, place stakes, win deals, and manage their orders and payments.
Behind the trading interface, the platform implemented a background matching and state-processing engine responsible for supporting the trading process and managing automatic order lifecycle transitions.
To meet the aggressive MVP deadline, the development team adopted a hybrid technology stack and used Amazon Web Services for infrastructure and managed cloud services.
After the MVP was completed, SCAND continued development, assisted with service certification, and supported after the production launch. The team subsequently participated in planning and delivering regular three-month releases containing new features and enhancements.
Solution
The completed solution was a national-level biomass trading web platform that connected buyers and sellers through an online exchange. The platform combined client-facing trading functionality with a dedicated back-office environment for operators, while cloud infrastructure provided the foundation for hosting and scaling the service.
Core Platform Capabilities
- Company Registration & Onboarding: Enabled users and companies to register and complete the required onboarding process before participating in trading.
- Biomass Trading: Allowed registered buyers and sellers to participate in online trading and place stakes.
- Trading Matching Engine: Supported automated matching between buyers and sellers through background processing and trading-state management.
- Order Lifecycle Management: Provided tools for creating, tracking, and managing orders throughout their lifecycle.
- Payment Management: Supported payment-related workflows and security fund management.
- Security Funds: Enabled management of security funds in both the Client Office and Back Office.
- Trading Locations: Provided management of locations associated with biomass trading activities.
- Biomass Calculator: Delivered a dedicated calculator for biomass-related trading operations in the Client Office.
- Operator Dashboard: Provided statistics and operational information for platform administrators and operators.
- Government Compliance: Incorporated controls and processes required to comply with government service requirements.
- Internationalization: Provided multilingual capabilities for the Client Office.
- Notifications: Integrated external email and SMS providers for platform communications.
- Marketing Website: Included a public-facing website supporting the platform's marketing activities.
User Workflow
- Registration: Buyers and sellers register companies and complete the required onboarding process.
- Trading Preparation: Registered participants manage their accounts, security funds, trading locations, and related information.
- Order Placement: Users create orders and participate in the online biomass trading process.
- Automated Matching: The platform's background matching engine processes trading states and connects compatible buyer and seller orders.
- Deal Processing: Matched participants receive completed deals and can track the corresponding order lifecycle.
- Payment Management: Users manage payment-related processes and security funds through the platform.
- Monitoring: Operators use the Back Office to monitor trading activity and review statistics.
- Communication: Email and SMS integrations support relevant system notifications and operational communication.
Technology Stack
To support MVP development, automated trading, transactional processing, and national-level cloud infrastructure, we selected the following technology stack:
Backend
- Java
- Spring Boot
Frontend
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- React
- HTML
- CSS
Database
- PostgreSQL
- Amazon Aurora
Cloud Infrastructure
- Amazon Web Services
- Route 53
- CloudFront
- RDS
- S3
- Secrets Manager
- Other AWS services
Source Control & CI/CD
- Bitbucket
- Git
- Bitbucket Pipelines
- Jenkins
Project Management & Documentation
- Jira
- Confluence
Results
The BioExchange project delivered a national-level digital marketplace for biomass trading within the required MVP timeframe. The major results included:
- 3.5-month MVP delivery and launch for a national-level biomass trading platform
- Complete order lifecycle management
- Dedicated Client Office and Back Office functionality
- Cloud infrastructure based on Amazon Web Services
- Continued development and enhancement following the MVP release
- Support with service certification and production maintenance
Core Team
- Solution Architect: Designed the platform architecture, trading procedures, integrations, and cloud solution
- Java / Spring Boot Engineers: Developed transactional services, back-office functionality, trading workflows, and backend integrations
- Frontend Engineers: Built the React-based Client Office and Back Office interfaces
- DevOps Engineers: Managed AWS infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, deployments, and development environments
- QA Engineers: Validated trading workflows, order lifecycle management, integrations, and platform reliability
- Business Analysts / Project Managers: Supported requirements, planning, documentation, release coordination, and compliance-related processes
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