The Covantis initiative was created in October 2018 by ADM, Bunge, Cargill, LDC and Glencore Agriculture to develop technologies to standardize and digitize global agricultural shipping transactions for the benefit of the entire industry. The initiative is jointly developing a platform to make global trade simple, secure and efficient, generating efficiencies and cost savings throughout the international agri supply chain.

A Covantis entity and its digital platform are expected to be launched in 2020, subject to regulatory approvals. The initial focus will be on automating grain and oilseed post-trade execution processes and the first trade lane of the future platform will cover international bulk shipment of soybeans from Brazil (port of Santos) to China.

While the platform aims to eventually cover all key execution processes, the first release will focus specifically on:

• Nominations handling, including forwarding, splits and substitutions resolution.
• String mapping and visualization.
• Effective and comprehensive communication capabilities that will include contextualized instant messaging with the possibility to exchange documents and instructions, activity log and notifications.

The founding members of the Covantis initiative selected ConsenSys, a market-leading Ethereum blockchain technology company, as the lead technology partner to develop its transformative platform. ConsenSys will leverage its enterprise-ready blockchain solutions and services, including PegaSys Orchestrate, Kaleido and MythX to build the blockchain network on Ethereum. It will build a secured platform based on Quorum, a permissioned Ethereum-based blockchain protocol, to cater to both small and large players across the supply chain.