Vakt Sees Trade Volumes Grow Significantly – Expects More Growth in 2024
Vakt has seen on platform crude and refined products trade volumes grow exponentially in recent years. The massive growth in trade volumes is down to more customers integrating with the platform and customers going live in different markets, Edward Cheetham told us. “The most important market in those numbers is the global vessel trades and that includes for crude and refined products,” he said. “The 2023 jump in trade volumes is directly due to global vessel trades going live as well as the activities of significant new customers utilizing the platform, a reflection of the clear value that VAKT delivers to energy traders in the form of reduced transaction costs and increased settlement speed.”
Edward expects trade volumes flowed down through Vakt to continue to grow strongly. “We are launching other energy markets this year and we also expect several new customers to integrate and come onboard,” he said. “We expect another substantial trade volume jump in 2024 – perhaps as much as another 50%.” Indeed, Edward is extremely bullish about the platform because of new markets being integrated, new customers coming onboard, and existing customers expanding their use of the platform.
VAKT is essentially a set of platforms that its customers are connected to via APIs to exchange, compare and agree on data relating to physical oil trades and confirmations, vessel logistics and inspection operations. Right now, it provides services in several areas for oil trades. These include confirmation handling for waterborne oil trades via vSure, logistics via vLogistics and terminal connection (as well as connection to several major inspection and testing companies) via vActuals, with a longer-term view to digitalizing all communication flow in oil. vSure supports bilateral confirmations and has gained traction in this segment of the market with several customers for the service. These customers now include non-owner customers as well.
Edward had previously told me that “VAKT is the digitization of all of customer communication flows and that it exists in the space between the market participants, facilitating the seamless digital communication of every aspect of physical commodities transactions. It means that participants ETRMs are connected live to other participants ETRMs – A web of digital connectivity backed by a secure private encrypted blockchain.”
