Commodities Engineering and Balsamo Ready to Take Off
What do you do if you work in the commodities trading business implementing CTRM for many years only to discover that each system has its own shortcomings? You start your own software business! In fact, many of the smaller vendors offering CTRM and CM solutions today started in exactly that way. Recently however, I became reacquainted with Commodities Engineering and its founder Jerome Seguin. This is exactly his story and today, he and Commodities Engineering are thriving and growing, offering Balsamo – a CTRM solution that he states is different and represents a new and modern generation of Cloud Based Solution.
I became aware of Commodities Engineering a few years ago when it first appeared on our radar. Based in Switzerland, the company was working on its CTRM, Balsamo, at the time it was a work in progress. Since then, the company has gone on to prove its concepts with several implementations and a strategic partner in the shape of a Tier 1 Global Metals Trading Company. The firm has grown to more than ten product and industry experts and four geographical locations. It is in the process of redesigning its website and readying for a push into the market as the ‘proven’ solution for Metal Raw Materials, Concentrates and Refined Metals.
Built using the very latest in technologies and architecture – read Java – Balsamo has been built to perform rapid real-time calculations that can be spread across multiple unlimited servers, scalable with in memory data capabilities, according to Mr. Seguin. Although multi-commodity capable, Commodities Engineering have targeted Ferrous and non-Ferrous Metal Raw Materials and Base Metals as their initial area of focus believing this segment of the market to be under-served by commercial solutions. The customers that currently use the software, do so for all types of metals concentrates, scrap, industrial, refined metals, associated derivatives, risk, P&L and mark-to-market. The solution can support all aspects of trading, hedging, logistics, invoicing, blending, splitting, warehouse management and so on making it a complete CTRM/CM solution, Mr. Seguin tells us.
It certainly sounds like an exciting new addition to the CTRM/CM software market and in the next few weeks, we will be getting a demonstration of the solution. Sitting in the metals space, it does initially target what has been an underserved part of the market in which some vendors have tried, and failed, to bring a complete product to market. By starting in one of the most complex areas of Commodity trading, Balsamo can be easily extendible to other bulk commodities. As Mr. Seguin told us, it was designed to be commodity agnostic where the commodity is simply a part of the set-up process. We will be watching Commodities Engineering with interest in the coming weeks and months,
