Dutch multinational banking and financial services company Rabobank recently announced the settlement of a $12 million intercontinental commodity trade using blockchain technology.

Rabobank and other logistics companies collaborated with the United States-based agricultural behemoth Cargill and agri-commodity trader Argocrop International to manage the trade transaction of wheat from North America to Southeast Asia. They used the Singapore-based blockchain platform called dltledgers for streamlining the process.

Five days for the trade

It was reported that completing a similar cross-continent trade using traditional processes could take up to a month.

However, the firms involved in this wheat trade used dltledgers’ blockchain platform for end-to-end digital trade executions and digitalizing the document and trade execution process. This helped them slash the settlement time to just five days. Jennifer Davidson, the trade execution lead at Cargill, stated:

“We see this transaction as the latest example of how working together and using technology to solve challenges can improve trade, as well as traceability, food safety, nutrition and more.”

Rabobank’s key facilitators, Mario Cortinhal in North America and Olivier De Jong in Singapore said that they were able to minimize the time spent on processing documents due to the effectiveness of consensus-driven smart contracts.

Blockchain in food supply chain

Blockchain has seen substantial acceptance in the food and supply chain industry. From Starbucks to Nestlé, food majors are expanding continuously expanding their blockchain initiatives.

On April 6, Nestlé announced that it was expanding its IBM Food Trust blockchain technology platform to its coffee brand Zoégas.