(14 April 2020 – Europe) Rabobank has successfully financed a cross-continent trade finance transaction between Cargill and Agrocorp using the ‘dltledgers’ blockchain platform.
The US$12 million wheat shipment deal from North America to Indonesia was settled in five days, marking a significant reduction in the normal turnaround time for traditional trade finance processes that can stretch out up to five times longer at weeks and even over a month.
The dltledgers platform enables trading companies to connect to their supply chain network and digitalise trade processes and financing documentation based on Hyperledger Fabric.
Smart contracts allow traders to automate the creation of trade flows and build a digitally signed consensus framework among multiple stakeholders. The solution is particularly effective in the current constrained operating environment as exporters, banks and logistics providers seek out methods of maintaining operations during the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus health crisis.
“What’s interesting here is that each transaction can include multiple unconnected counterparties, represent tens of millions of dollars, and involve the registration of hundreds of different data points into the platform. The numbers are truly impressive, but what’s more remarkable is that this is not a proof-of-concept, but real production use” stated Hyperledger Consortium Executive Director Brian Behlendorf.
“Consensus-driven smart contracts in this deal minimised our time spent on processing documents by more than half. Riding on the success of this test-case, Rabobank is excited to advance the US$10 trillion trade-finance industry” stated Rabobank Head of International Trade Finance Services, Mario Cortinhal