Chinsay’s Intelligent Contract Platform (ICP) will digitize end-to-end Contract Lifecycle Management for Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO) has picked Chinsay, a firm specializing in the automation of systems for the commodities and freight markets, for digitizing its commercial contracting process. The mining major will use Chinsay’s ICP to leverage blockchain technology and digitize the process from the issue of a contract through to its completion. (THE FINTECH TIMES)

Chinsay’s ICP reduces the time taken to create, issue, and approve commodity contracts from several days to under two hours.

Rio Tinto and Chinsay

In June 2019, Chinsay processed the first fully digitalized iron ore trade. It was a test run conducted in partnership with Rio Tinto and Cargill’s Metals business on Chinsay’s Intelligent Contract Platform (ICP).

“Contract Lifecycle Management goes beyond the creation and administration of contracts,” said Peter Hopp, General Counsel Commercial of Rio Tinto. “By utilizing unique blockchain technology, we are able to create and integrate financial, shipping, and other transactional documentation to enhance the experience of our customers and suppliers in a seamless way.”

The company also said it selected Chinsay for its understanding of the commodities market, transaction flows, and customer-centric approach.

Commodity digitization

The complex processes and workflow in commodity transactions have long been considered a key area for digitization. It would reduce inefficiencies, paper documentation, and fraud.

Rio Tinto’s iron ore mining rival BHP (ASX: BHP) also conducted an iron ore trade with China Baowu on MineHub’s blockchain platform in June this year.

MineHub said then that it would incorporate the learnings from the BHP-Baowu iron ore trade into the next release of its platform.

“It will start to provide a solution to the increasingly urgent need for industry-wide digitalization, by boosting both safety, transparency, and resilience of critical supply chains,” said MineHub’s CEO, Arnoud Busmann. “Especially as current pandemic events and fraud cases in the commodity trading industry are causing a step-change in the adoption of digital solutions.”

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Image credit: Rio Tinto Multimedia Gallery