Standard Chartered, Trafigura and Advario complete live electronic oil inventory financing via SGTraDex

Standard Chartered, Trafigura and Advario announced today the completion of their first live electronic oil inventory financing via Singapore Trade Data Exchange (SGTraDex), a common data infrastructure launched in June 2022 to facilitate trusted and secure data sharing across supply chains.

Standard Chartered provided financing to Trafigura for its oil inventory stored by energy storage company Advario, where Advario provided key data elements that enabled the execution of the trade electronically via SGTraDex. This paperless transaction was done by way of the Bank’s Structured Inventory Product (SIP), in which Standard Chartered obtained title of the oil purchased from Trafigura before selling it back to the leading global commodities trader within a pre-agreed timeframe. The transfer of title helped to free up Trafigura’s cash flow for a longer period of time.

Documents of transactions conducted on SGTraDex are verified using the TradeTrust framework and distributed ledger technology. The establishing of a SGTraDex data-sharing connection between oil terminals and financing banks on SGTraDex also ensures that timely and immutable inventory information is passed from the terminal to the bank without any risk of tampering or alteration.

The success of this transaction demonstrates the viability of electronic oil inventory financing in reducing the risks of double-financing and thereby helping to facilitate greater funds accessibility for a wider pool of traders.

Stephan Jansma, Chief Financial Officer, Asia Pacific, Trafigura, said “Trafigura is pleased to take a leading role in the digital transformation of commodity trade flows, together with Standard Chartered, one of our key banking partners, Advario and SGTraDex. We are working towards SGTraDex becoming a regular feature in the financing of our inventories in Singapore and other import and export flows.”

Patrick Lee, Cluster CEO, Singapore and ASEAN Markets (Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Representative Offices), Standard Chartered, said, “We are proud to partner with Trafigura and Advario in executing our first live electronic oil inventory financing via the SGTraDex digital infrastructure. The success of this significant transaction underscores Standard Chartered’s commodity finance capabilities and demonstrates our commitment to supporting the growth and development of a secure and transparent digital supply chain ecosystem. Together we can play a key role in enhancing Singapore’s competitiveness as an international trade and commodity finance centre.”

Antoine Cadoux, CEO, SGTraDex, said “We would like to congratulate Standard Chartered, Trafigura and Advario on their first live transaction on SGTraDex. All parties have been instrumental in developing our digital infrastructure and use cases. We look forward to our continued collaboration to drive adoption and develop new use cases across the industry. We are confident SGTraDex, with our mantra of openness, interoperability and security, has much to offer to ecosystem partners.”

Snehashish Chatterjee, Vice President, Advario S.E.A., said “Advario is proud to be an integral part of providing reliable and trusted data via SGTraDex’s data sharing infrastructure in order to facilitate the secure and seamless trade of commodities. We look forward to developing this offering with key partners such as Trafigura and Standard Chartered and the wider industry.”

This successful transaction marks a major milestone in bringing actionable solutions to the ecosystem and will further boost Singapore’s status as a key global and regional trade hub.