Putuo district has launched Shanghai's first comprehensive service and management platform for trusted bulk commodity trade.

The district's bulk commodity sector is centered on nonferrous metals such as copper, with spot trading covering mineral resources, mining rights, and a broad range of metal products.

The new platform, built on blockchain technology for shipping and trade, connects and verifies data related to transactions, payments, warehousing, delivery, and invoicing. This ensures transaction authenticity while supporting invoicing, financing, and risk management. It aims to tackle major bottlenecks in the sector's digital shift and serve as a blueprint for Shanghai's wider trade digitalization efforts.

As of July 9, more than 170 enterprises in Putuo have signed data authorization agreements with the platform.

The platform has provided relevant government departments with a total of 1.14 million valid records on the business operations of nearly 90 enterprises. Multiple trading venues, warehousing providers, and banks have also completed preparatory work for system integration.

The platform brings key benefits to enterprises, including unblocking data flows, lowering financing costs, and mitigating operational risks.

The platform provides a unified online service portal through Government Online-Offline Shanghai, enabling data sharing across entities and cross-checking warehousing, transaction, fund-flow, and invoice data from multiple sources.

Leveraging on-chain data, the platform helps tax authorities set invoicing limits and automatically generate corporate credit profiles. Banks can use on-chain data to speed up loan approvals, reducing enterprises' costs associated with in-person procedures and paper-based submissions.

With end-to-end oversight, the platform helps identify a range of trade risks and effectively curbs issues such as fictitious transactions and repeated pledging of the same collateral.