MineHub Technologies says its MineHub platform has been used by BHP and China Minmetals in the first cross-border copper concentrate trial shipment processed on blockchain technology.

Arnoud Star Busmann, CEO at MineHub, said: “The MineHub platform has evolved significantly since BHP, the leading global resources company, completed the first iron ore transactions on it in 2020 with China Baowu. Now another industry-leading innovative company, China Minmetals, working with BHP has used our blockchain platform for secure and transparent inter-company and cross-border data sharing including multiple new use cases like emissions data sharing and a metals assay exchange process.

“We are very excited to complete this pilot transaction with these forward-looking partners. Designing and building with industry for industry is a continuous journey and fundamental to our success.”

At present, the settlement process of copper concentrates is lengthy and complex, suffers from high processing costs, complex pricing mechanisms and vulnerability to errors and fraud, according to MineHub. The information exchange between the two parties of trade execution relies largely on e-mail and paper transmission, involving many parties such as banks, commercial institutions, logistics providers and often government departments. Large numbers of commercial documents are produced as part of the process that need to be exchanged and verified.

As traded volumes of copper concentrate have doubled in recent years in the largest market China, market participants urgently need a safe, stable, efficient, and real-time data sharing system platform, according to MineHub.

“MineHub provides that solution, which has been created to support these complex cross-border commodity transactions,” the company said. “It enables operations teams in companies like BHP and Minmetals to collaborate with each other as well as their banks, service and logistics providers on the basis of shared, real-time data. Data privacy, integrity and control are secured by enterprise blockchain technology.”

The end-to-end post-trade process for this shipment between BHP and Minmetals was completed on the platform, and, according to the company, included the use of several MineHub innovations:

• Blockchain-based assay exchange, including final assay determination;
• Carbon emissions data sharing (Scope 1, 2 and 3); and
• Using MineHub node hosted in mainland China to ensure local data residence.

This was the first transaction of its kind for copper concentrates, and the parties have agreed to continue working together to promote the development and deployment of efficient post-transaction process solutions, create a better customer experience and achieve transparency and tracking of carbon emissions reduction, MineHub said.