AUSTRALIA’S NO.1 COOPERATIVE TO RELY ON EKA’S SOLUTION FOR ALL ITS GRAIN ACQUISITION, POOLING, TRADING AND MARKETING TO GLOBAL EXPORT MARKETS.
Eka Software Solutions, the leading global provider of Smart Commodity Management software solutions, today announced that Australia’s CBH Group has selected Eka software to track the movement of millions of tons of grain through its global trading business and to manage its associated financial position.
CBH Group, of Perth, is among Western Australia’s largest businesses and is the countr’s largest grain cooperative with 2009 revenues topping $1.1 billion (Australian). Comprising 4700 growers, the business helps its grower-shareholders obtain the best return for their crops. Founded in 1933, the Group receives, stores and handles an average 10 million metric tons of harvested grains from growers each year, of which 95 percent is exported. CBH’s marketing arm CBH Grain is one of Australia’s biggest grain marketers, shipping grain to some 20 major export markets such as Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and China. Grains include wheat, barley, lupins, canola and oats.
Delivering superior financial returns to grower-shareholders demands that CBH conduct timely acquisition, pooling, trading, hedging and marketing, despite the volatile nature of commodity prices. Eka mitigates physical and financial risk in CBH’s trading activities via features that include tracking of in-turn/out-turn inventory losses; price basis adjustments based on grain quality; origination or destination; generation of physical shipment documentation; secondary cost accruals and cost of goods accumulation; and position management with the ability drill down to view underlying trades.
In addition to providing these key capabilities around physical trading, Eka’s solution also tracks profit and loss from the use of financial derivatives in hedging transactions, and allows measurement of hedge effectiveness. A web browser interface affords CBH’s 1000 employees in Australia and in its offices in Japan and China easy access to Eka’s system, with no need to install software on local desktops.
“CBH faces some significant challenges in the future, particularly as our complexity and scale increases with our growth in export markets,” said Brian Mumme, General Manager, CBH Grains. “Our team conducted a comprehensive global search over the past 18 months to examine many vendor solutions to meet these challenges. We determined that Eka offered the best overall value for CBH, because of its experience in grains, and its knowledge of physical trading. We are impressed with the integrity of Eka’s people and their commitment to our success. Eka’s professional services team is already busy on the ground here in Perth, and we look forward to a successful implementation that will deliver real financial value to our growers in Australia.”
“High-quality, timely information is crucial to the CBH Group’s ability to create and return value to their grower- shareholders,” said Eka founder and Chief Executive Officer, Manav Garg. “Over time, CBH will replace many in-house legacy systems as they consolidate their operations on the Eka platform. We appreciate the significance of the implementation and the confidence Brian and his CBH team have shown in standardizing on our solution.”
ABOUT EKA SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
Eka is the global leader in providing Smart Commodity Management software solutions. Eka’s analytics-driven, end-to-end Commodity Management platform enables companies to efficiently and profitably meet the challenges of complex and volatile markets.
The company’s best-of-breed solutions manage commodity trading, enterprise risk, compliance, procurement, supply chain, operations, logistics, bulk handling, processing, and decision support. Eka partners with customers to accelerate growth, increase profitability, improve operational control, and manage risks and exposures.
Eka is a team of 315 staff with offices in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and EMEA, serving a rapidly growing global client base across multiple commodity segments.