Dutch multinational banking and financial services group Rabobank announced on Monday it has collaborated with global agriculture supply chains Cargill and Agrocorp to completed a cross-continent commodity trade transaction of wheat from North America to Southeast Asia on a blockchain platform provided by Singapore-based dltledgers.
According to Rabobank, the shipment is valued at $12 million and settled on April 1st from North America to Indonesia. It occurred with six trading partners participating on a common blockchain platform. Partners included Cargill, Rabobank North America, Rabobank Singapore, shipowner Amarante, shipping agent Transmarine, and Agrocorp.
Rabobank further explained that the blockchain platform provides a “repeatable framework” for end-to-end digital trade executions, digitalizing the document and trade execution process. Jennifer Davidson, Trade Execution Lead at Cargill, stated that the Cargill team sees this transaction as the latest example of Cargill working with its partners to help make food and agriculture supply chains more inclusive and responding to demands. Rabobank’s key facilitators, Mario Cortinhal in North America and Olivier De Jong in Singapore, then noted:
“Consensus-driven smart contracts in this deal minimized our time spent on processing documents by more than half. Riding on the success of this test-case, Rabobank is excited to advance the $10 trillion trade-finance industry.”
Samir Neji, CEO, dltledgers, went on to add:
“Our ready-to-use, plug-and-play modules make it relatively straightforward to set up and to implement blockchain throughout a supply chain or cross-border trade flow. We’re extremely excited about the increasing levels of adoption we’re witnessing.”
Meanwhile, other companies from around the world have been using blockchain technology as well, including Swiss multinational food and drink company Nestlé recently announced it is expanding the use of the IBM Food Trust Blockchain technology platform to its Zoégas coffee brand. As previously reported, Nestlé revealed that it started using blockchain in 2017 when it joined the IBM Food Trust as a founding member. It has launched select editions of Zoégas whole beans and roast and ground coffee in Sweden and its “Summer 2020” range is a 100% Rainforest Alliance certified blend of arabica coffee beans from three origins – Brazil, Rwanda, and Colombia.
