How VOLO Built a Commodities Trading Platform for TradeCloud

Executive Summary

Client: TradeCloud

Industry: Commodities Trading

Engagement: Full-Cycle Product Development Partnership

Country: Germany (Global reach)

Project at a Glance

Global commodities trading, where single deals run into multi-million-dollar volumes, ran on email threads, unstructured chats, and manual contract handling. Negotiation steps, structured processes, and trust are the cornerstones of every deal in this space, yet the tools traders relied on offered none of that. TradeCloud, founded by senior leaders from Trafigura, set out to change that. VOLO served as their full-cycle technology partner for over six years, building a secure, cloud-native platform that brought structure and transparency to deal workflows and unified pre-trade and post-trade processes for energy and metals markets worldwide.

The result: a centralized digital hub that connects producers, traders, and consumers with structured deal-negotiation flows, real-time communication, blockchain-backed audit trails, and enterprise-grade security, replacing a relationship-driven industry's reliance on fragmented, offline processes with a platform built around how high-value deals actually get done.

About the Client

TradeCloud was founded by former senior executives of Trafigura (an industry leader with $240B+ annual revenue) to modernize how physical commodities are traded globally. It operates as a digital hub where producers, traders, and consumers connect, negotiate, and finalize contracts in a secure, community-driven environment. Covering both energy and metals markets, the platform's mission is to make global trading faster, more transparent, and fully auditable.

The Challenge

Despite its global scale, the commodities trading industry remained heavily dependent on email, unstructured chat, and manual contract handling. Critical trade information was forwarded manually across departments, teams operated without a shared system of record, and offline communication left trading houses exposed to invoice fraud and compliance risks.

TradeCloud needed a platform that could unify trade communication, enforce security from day one, and serve as a single source of truth for all parties without disrupting the established workflows of an industry with low digital adoption.

Key Challenges:

No centralized platform connecting global trading participants
Manual contract handling and negotiations creating delays and errors
Fragmented communication reducing visibility and increasing compliance risk
Fraud exposure through unverified documents and unsecured email
User adoption barriers in a relationship-driven, low-tech industry

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Our Solution

VOLO designed and built TradeCloud's full platform ecosystem from architecture to deployment, scaling to a 30 FTE team across a six-year partnership. The team operated as an integrated extension of TradeCloud's leadership, co-shaping the product vision and roadmap alongside the founders.

TradeCloud Web (TCW) - Post-Trade

A secure digital workspace where counterparties finalize trades, exchange confirmations, and track post-trade updates in real time. Integrated in-app messaging, identity verification, and blockchain-backed audit trails replaced fragmented email and spreadsheet exchanges with a single, traceable source of truth, even when counterparties stayed off-platform.

TradeCloud Energy (TCE) and Metals (TCM) - Pre-Trade

Modules built for oil, gas, coal, distillates, and metals markets that digitized negotiation and contract workflows. Price discovery, live quoting, digital contract creation, KYC verification, and real-time communication tools reduced negotiation cycles from days to hours. The Metals module introduced workflow variations specific to metals logistics and quality validation.

TradeCloud Mobile

A native mobile companion app with real-time push notifications, secure authentication, and deal status tracking, keeping decision-makers connected across time zones.

ESG and Sustainability Layer

A built-in module to capture and report ESG-related data tied to physical trades, supporting compliance and sustainability reporting across the trade lifecycle.

Security and Infrastructure

Built on Microsoft Azure with end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, role-based access control, and R3 Corda Enterprise blockchain for immutable transaction audit trails. DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines supported stable, frequent releases with 24/7 monitoring.

The Impact

TradeCloud became one of the first blockchain-enabled digital platforms in global commodities trading. What once ran on email threads and spreadsheets now operates on a scalable, cloud-native system with full auditability across the trade lifecycle.

6+ years of continuous partnership, scaling up to 30 VOLO specialists
First-to-market cloud platform purpose-built for commodities trading communication
Single source of truth across pre-trade and post-trade processes for energy and metals
Reduced operational risk through built-in KYC, blockchain records, and encrypted data handling
Improved supply chain visibility via real-time container tracking integration with Roambee

Key Takeaways

Trust is a design decision

Commodities trading runs on relationships. Translating that into a digital platform required designing for familiarity, security, and auditability simultaneously rather than treating them as trade-offs.

First-mover advantage requires delivery discipline

Capturing a market window means moving fast without cutting corners. VOLO architected for performance, compliance, and usability from day one.

Scalable teams enable scalable products

The ability to grow from 6 to 30 specialists as the platform matured meant TradeCloud always had the right depth of expertise without overextending resources.

Adoption is an engineering problem

Many traders had limited digital experience. Interfaces designed around real user behavior, not assumed behavior, drove adoption in an industry not known for embracing change.