Covantis Case Study: Modernizing Global Supply Chains with ConsenSys Blockchain Solutions

The global agricultural trade industry has been grappling with outdated and inefficient processes. The industry has not seen significant technological innovation since the mass adoption of email 30 years ago, making global supply chain management increasingly challenging. The need to track more partners, suppliers, and endpoints has become more complex, and post-trade execution remains highly manual, repetitive, costly, and time-consuming. The industry is heavily reliant on paper-based processes and email exchanges, with over 275 million emails exchanged annually to process an estimated 11,000 worldwide shipments of grain. Paper-based certificates and bills of lading are not easily exchanged among multiple parties, and replacing them if misplaced is costly. The COVID-19 pandemic has further disrupted supply chains due to interruptions to paper document deliveries and the increasing necessity to work from home, accelerating the need for digital transformation.

Covantis is a joint initiative founded by six of the largest agricultural traders: ADM, Bunge, Cargill, COFCO, Louis Dreyfus Company, and Viterra. The platform is focused on digitizing global trade processes to make them more simple, secure, and efficient. Its goal is to minimize operating risks while increasing market efficiency for the agricultural trading and shipping industry. The initiative was created to facilitate post-trade execution: the movement of cargo from port of origin to port of destination after buyers and sellers have agreed on contract terms. The solution aims to simplify coordination between stakeholders and various counterparts across the processes of inventory ownership identification, goods chartering from origin to destination, import regulation compliance, final collection, and everything in between.