Modified Photo by GotCredit / licensed under CC BY 2.0

We’re delighted to share news regarding the completion of the world’s first integrated paperless trade transaction in iron ore – involving Rio Rinto selling bulk iron ore to Cargill, who sourced the cargo from Australia on behalf of a customer in China, supported by banks HSBC and BNP Paribas.

The trade was executed through an end-to-end data flow from the sales of goods contract in Chinsay’s ICP platform, the letter of credit management in Voltron, and the shipping / trade documentation in CargoDocs DocEx, with core users accessing all three applications via Voltron. Specifically, the following actions were taken:

• Rio Tinto and Cargill collaborated on Chinsay’s Intelligent Contract Platform (ICP) to dramatically reduce the time it took to create, issue, approve and digitally sign commodity contracts from several days to hours
• Contract attributes/data flowed from ICP to Voltron, where Letter of Credit (LC) issuance was completed in less than two hours compared with 1-2 days for traditional, paper-based LCs, with one single-source LC digitally transmitted across the platforms
• Rio Tinto, Cargill, ship agent, shipowner, HSBC and BNP Paribas collaborated via our web-based CargoDocs solution to draft, approve, sign, issue, transfer and electronically present the electronic Bill of Lading (eB/L) plus upload relevant supporting documents, slashing trade document turnaround to hours as opposed to days/weeks and accelerating the trade via integrated data flow between CargoDocs and Voltron
• 100% of documents required under the LC were presented electronically, with one single-source eB/L plus supporting documents digitally transmitted across the platforms
• In turn enabling a seamless, integrated paperless trade flow connecting data from CargoDocs DocEx and ICP to the Voltron blockchain
   

Earlier in 2019 we announced our partnership with Voltron to integrate CargoDocs DocEx into the Voltron blockchain trade finance application. With the integration now live, the recent milestone transaction paves the way for many more to come, as trade participants seek to find simple, efficient and secure ways to connect previously siloed data and execute trades with increased efficiency, simplicity and visibility. 
 

Media Contact
Nick Demetriou, CMO, essDOCS
E: nicholas.demetriou@essdocs.com 
T: +30 210 724 5960