Glencore joins grain merchants' digital project

PARIS (Reuters) - Glencore Agriculture Limited has joined a project launched last year by other global grain merchants to use new technologies to raise efficiency in trading operations.

The initiative was announced last October by the so-called ABCD grain majors - Archer Daniels Midland <ADM.N>, Bunge <BG.N>, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Company.

It was later joined by COFCO International, the overseas trading arm of Chinese state-owned food group COFCO.

In a joint statement on Thursday, Glencore and partners said that, after studying digital solutions such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, next steps would include selecting technology providers and developing a pilot covering bulk soybean shipments from Brazil to China.

The partners have underlined potential gains in moving away from paper documents and emailed-based communication prevalent in grain trading towards faster digital processes.

Glencore Agriculture is jointly owned by diversified commodity group Glencore <GLEN.L> and two Canadian investment funds.

(Reporting by Gus Trompiz; editing by Jason Neely)