Glencore Agriculture Limited has joined a project launched last year by other global grain merchants to use new technologies to raise efficiency in trading operations. The initiative was announced last October by the so-called ABCD grain majors - Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Company. It was later joined by COFCO International, the overseas trading arm of Chinese state-owned food group COFCO.

In a joint statement on Thursday, Glencore and partners said that, after studying digital solutions such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, next steps would include selecting technology providers and developing a pilot covering bulk soybean shipments from Brazil to China. The partners have underlined potential gains in moving away from paper documents and emailed-based communication prevalent in grain trading towards faster digital processes.

Copyright Reuters, 2019