Swiss-Italian shipping giant MSC, a member of blockchain-powered global trade platform TradeLens, is introducing Wave BL’s electronic bill of lading (eBL) for its customers around the world, following two years of pilot testing.
The solution, which MSC is launching today, uses distributed ledger technology to enable shippers and other supply chain stakeholders to receive and transmit the bill of lading electronically through a secure, decentralised network – helping reduce delays caused by traditional paper documents, and also reducing the risk of fraud or duplication.
“Traditionally, the shipping industry has relied quite heavily on physical paper documents. And among these, the bill of lading is the most important transport document in international trade,” says André Simha, global chief digital and information officer at MSC. “While there have been attempts to create an eBL solution in the past, we are now in a position to introduce a solution that can pave the way to
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UK Export Finance, the state-owned export credit agency, is facing a review of its decision to back Total’s US$20bn liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. It follows a barrage of criticism directed towards the agency by UK MPs and activists for its continued support of overseas fossil fuel deals.
Friends of the Earth, an NGO, has been given the go-ahead for a judicial review that will examine the judgment taken by UKEF to provide around US$1bn of taxpayer money to help finance the plant.
The NGO says that the defendants failed to consider essential issues or carry out the necessary analysis to properly determine if supporting the project aligned with the UK’s and Mozambique’s obligations under the Paris Agreement – the global deal to keep greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
Danish wind giant Vestas has signed a bumper accounts receivables facility to allow it to extend payment terms for exports of its wind turbines to three Australian wind farms.
The facility, valued at A$415mn, will be used for purchasing receivables on a limited recourse basis arising out of the supply and installation of Vestas’ wind turbines for the Ryan Corner, Hawkesdale and Berrybank Two wind farms in the Australian state of Victoria. The projects are owned by Australian subsidiaries of Global Power Generation (GPG), a joint venture between Spanish multinational Naturgy and the Kuwait Investment Authority.
In a statement, Vestas says that GPG was looking for short-term financing options to improve its project returns on the three wind farms. Over a nine-month process, Vestas Financial Solutions in Asia Pacific structured the export credit agency (ECA)-backed facility to extend the payment terms by two years, bringing in Santander and Deutsche Bank as financiers, and China’s
The company historically provides payables and receivables financing, but tells
GTR ahead of the launch that expanding into inventory financing “will enable Taulia to provide its global customer base with solutions that cover all three areas of the cash conversion cycle”.
Chief executive Cedric Bru says an estimated US$44tn is “locked in supply chains” at any given moment, telling
GTR: “The journey we are on here is to unlock some of that working capital.”
The new business line will be led by Erik Wanberg, who was appointed as head of inventory management in March this year. Wanberg was previously a managing director at Wells Fargo Capital Finance, where he headed up its supply chain finance offering.