Case study
Kalebtec engagement · May to June 2026 · Market intelligence, energy and commodities
Bardi Fuels is a private, invite-only market-intelligence platform for oil, gas, and biofuels professionals. Kalebtec built it end to end — the authenticated web app, the admin dashboard, the serverless API, and a native iOS release, live on the Apple App Store.
Built with
Rowin worked with me on the launch of my company's app during Q2 of 2026. I could not recommend his work enough. He is pro-active, he avoids problems before they arise and profoundly cares for the tasks that are given to him. The work was completed in less time than initially shown and the follow up has been seamless thus far. Great person to work with.
Delivered ahead of the timeline he was quoted. Proactive, heading off problems before they became problems. Follow-up after handoff that has stayed seamless. This is what senior engineers who ship looks like from the buyer's side of the table.
What Bardi Fuels is
Bardi Fuels is a market-intelligence product for professionals who trade and follow oil, gas, biodiesel, and biofeedstock. It gives its members real-time prices, bids and offers, newsletters, and trade recaps behind a private, invite-only login.
It runs as an authenticated web application, an admin dashboard for the team that operates it, and a native iOS app on the Apple App Store. Kalebtec delivered the full product: backend API, web and admin front ends, the iOS app, the security posture, the release automation, and the operational handoff that lets the client run it without depending on the builder.
The client and the problem
These were not the requirements of a brochure site. Get any one of them wrong and there is no launchable product.
Prices, bids, offers, and newsletters are the product. Access had to be gated, invite-only, and administrator-approved — not open to anyone who found the URL.
Their audience are working professionals who expect a real app on their phone, not a bookmark. That meant a native iOS app on the App Store, with the security and polish that implies.
This is member data and market data. It had to be handled with production-level security and a defensible compliance posture from day one.
A small operation cannot be permanently dependent on the person who built the software. They needed runbooks and documentation to operate and release it themselves.
The risk, in plain terms: a leaky access gate exposes the very data that members pay for. A rejected or fragile iOS app means no mobile channel at all. Weak data handling is a liability the moment the first member signs in.
What we built
The full platform was owned end to end by a single principal engineer across backend, web, admin, native iOS, security, and operations.
Surface 01
The member-facing web application for prices, bids and offers, newsletters, and trade recaps, plus an admin dashboard for reviewing and approving members and publishing market updates. Live in production on Vercel.
Surface 02
An Express and Node API on managed Neon Postgres, with routes for prices, bids and offers, newsletters, trade recaps, health, and a consolidated startup snapshot. Authenticated with Firebase-issued tokens validated on every protected route.
Surface 03
A React Native app with real native capability: Face ID app lock, secure credential storage in the iOS Keychain, native push over Firebase Cloud Messaging and APNs, onboarding, native settings, and in-app account deletion. Shipped through TestFlight and Fastlane. Live on the App Store.
Surface 04
Production deployment docs, release runbooks, Fastlane lanes for build, submit, ship, status, and resubmission, a daily Firebase-to-Neon reconciliation, and point-in-time-recovery and rollback procedures. The client can run and release the product on their own.
The engineering
This is the part that matters for a buyer deciding whether the people behind the buying experience can actually build. A few of the decisions and the hard parts:
Controlled onboarding usually pulls you toward a full transactional-email system. Instead the invite and admin-approval flow was built on Firebase Authentication and Neon Postgres directly — a deliberate build-versus-complexity call that gave the client real access control without a system they would have to maintain.
Content Security Policy and HTTP security headers, per-route rate limiting, CORS controls, and request sanitization all shipped with version one. On the native side, the WebView is origin-locked to the production domain only, so the app cannot be pointed at anything else. When the product handles the data members pay for, this is not optional and it was not deferred.
The launch snapshot was collapsing four serial serverless reads into slow startup. That was consolidated into a single combined query using Neon's HTTP serverless driver, with schema setup moved off the request path and stale-while-revalidate on the client. Fewer round-trips, faster launch.
App Store review raised a Guideline 3.1.1 challenge. Rather than cut a new binary and restart the review cycle, the fix was a server-side toggle that hid registration inside the native shell through the existing bridge, paired with reframed review notes, then resubmitted. Knowing the platform gives you a lever the store cannot see is the difference between a one-day fix and a one-week loop.
EU data residency with the serverless deployment pinned to the Frankfurt region, documented sub-processors and data roles, in-app account deletion, and a privacy policy — built for a GDPR and EU digital-services context.
Fastlane lanes cover the full release lifecycle including resubmission, and a daily reconciliation keeps the Firebase identity records and the Neon database in agreement. This is the unglamorous work that keeps a product healthy after the builder walks away.
One senior person holding the entire stack is not a limitation here — it is why the pieces fit together and why the handoff is clean.
The outcome
From backend API to a published iOS app, delivered inside a focused engagement of roughly two months and handed off with the documentation to run it independently.
Actively using the app and its notifications daily to trade critical market information.
As one coherent launch. Bardi Fuels is live on the App Store.
Resolving a Guideline 3.1.1 challenge with a server-side toggle rather than a new binary.
By consolidating four serial serverless reads into a single combined query.
EU data residency, documented sub-processors and data roles, and in-app account deletion.
With deployment docs, release runbooks, and recovery and rollback procedures.
The business result, stated plainly and without inflation: Bardi Fuels came away with a launchable, controlled digital channel for its members and its market updates, and a real audience using it. Within two months of launch, 135 professionals were on the platform, trading and reacting to price moves through its live feeds and notifications every day. Not a one-off web build, but a product people showed up to use.
Note on scope honesty: no uptime or error-rate figure is claimed here. External observability was out of engagement scope, so those numbers were never tracked. We do not cite what we cannot support.
Why this matters if you are buying a website
Be clear about what Bardi Fuels is and is not. It is a custom market-intelligence platform — a substantially larger engagement than a €500 website. Nobody should read this and expect a native App Store app bundled into a small site package.
What it proves is the thing a website buyer actually wants to know before paying: who is behind the buying experience, and can they build. The same engineers who deliver a Kalebtec website are the ones who took Bardi Fuels from market expertise to a private, secure, production platform live on the App Store — and who resolved a real App Store review, hardened a real API, and shipped real operational documentation.
Buying a Kalebtec website is not hiring a freelancer for the afternoon or routing your project to an outsourced queue. It is buying a small amount of the same senior engineering that builds production software. Bardi Fuels is the proof that the buying experience is backed by people who ship.
Ready when you are
Fixed prices from €500, published up front. No quotes, no calls, and the same caliber of engineering behind every build.
100% satisfaction guarantee · refund up to design approval
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