COFCO International has agreed to join the recently announced plan to standardise data and digitise global agricultural shipping transactions.
The Chinese grain trader joins Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Co (LDC) in the initiative which was unveiled in late October.
Together, the companies say they are looking to “increase transparency and efficiency” for customers through digital technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.
“Emerging technologies like blockchain give us the opportunity to create a transparent, secure and efficient platform and transform global agricultural trade operations. Our shared vision is to develop a new standard available to everyone, bringing industry-wide benefits,” said COFCO International chief executive Johnny Chi.
The partnership is initially focused on developing technologies to automate grain and oilseed post-trade execution processes, significantly reducing costs and resources needed to move documents around the globe.
Longer term, the initiative aims to drive greater security, reliability, efficiency and transparency by digitizing manual, paper-based processes tied to contracts, invoices and payments, with a more modern, digitally based approach.
In January this year, LDC completed the first agricultural commodity transaction through blockchain, according to chief executive Ian McIntosh.
“This showed the technology’s capacity to generate efficiencies and reduce the time usually spent on manual document and data processing,” he said.
“By working with the industry to adopt standardised data and processes, we can truly harness the full potential of emerging technologies to improve global trade.”
In 2017, COFCO International handled over 100mt of related commodities with revenues worth a total of over $34bn.
