Multi-commodity trading and risk management
Commodity trading and risk, from trade to tonne.TBC
Volcan records every physical and derivative trade in any commodity, marks it against today's curves, and follows the tonnes from mine to ship. One system, with a full audit trail behind every number.
- Live positions and P&L, against the current curve
- One book for cargoes, swaps, futures, options and FX
- Every change logged, before and after
The problem
Price risk still runs on spreadsheets and ageing in-house systems. Positions go stale overnight. Cargoes sit in one place, swaps in another. And when someone asks how a number was reached, nobody can show them.
01 Producer operations · mine
The trade and the tonnes, in one system.
For bulk producers, Volcan runs the physical chain as a single model: material moving from pile to pile, carrying its tonnes, cost and quality. The mine plan and its production variance sit beside the stockpiles they feed.
02 Producer operations · rail and terminal
Every movement accounted for.
Rail movements, terminal stockpiles and vessel loading are recorded as they happen, so the tonnes on the ground match the tonnes in the book, right through to the invoice.
03 Physical cargoes · any commodity
From nomination to final quality.
Vessel nomination, load and discharge ports, laytime, quality specs and price adjustments. Blend several parcels into one cargo and keep track of the remnant left behind.
04 The whole book · mark-to-market
Every position marked to today's curve.
Cargoes, swaps and futures across energy, metals, agri and freight are marked against today's curves, all in one book, so exposure and P&L are current, never an overnight snapshot.
Live positions and mark-to-market
Ask what your position was on 31 March. Get the answer as of that date.
Positions, exposure and P&L recompute against the current curve, translated into your reporting currency, by entity, book and strategy. Contract terms are effective-dated, so history stays history.
| Book | Trades | Exposure | MTM P&L | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agri | 1 | US$5.79M | −US$163k | |
| Energy | 1 | −US$3.56M | +US$162k | |
| Metals | 1 | US$4.15M | +US$74k | |
| Thermal | 4 | −US$9.92M | +US$395k | |
| Total | 7 | −US$3.55M | +US$469k |
Illustrative figures. Try moving the curve, changing the date or the currency.
Multi-commodity by design
Any commodity. Every trade type.
Commodities are configuration, not code. Each client defines its own list, with its own units, whether that's tonnes or MMBtu. Nothing in the trade model is specific to one commodity, so a new market is a setting, not a project.
Energy
- Thermal coal
- LNG
Metals and minerals
- Iron ore
- Coking coal
- Coke
- Aluminium
Agri and biomass
- Grain
- Wheat
- Biomass
Freight
- Freight curves
Every trade type, in any commodity
- Physical cargoes
- Swaps
- Futures
- Options
- FX
Physical cargoes · any commodity
Blend the parcels. See the quality before it sails.
Combine parcels from several sources into one cargo. Volcan carries quality through the blend, checks it against the contract spec and applies the price adjustments, then records the remnant left on the ground.
Automatic price feeds
Prices arrive. Nobody re‑keys them.
Forward curves and index prices load automatically every day from the sources you already subscribe to, then flow into every position. Earlier marks stay on file, so any report can be run as of any date.
Integrates with Argus, GLOBALcoal, ICE, SGX and Macquarie. All integrations
- 19 OctThermal coal24 months0 re-keyed
- 19 OctIron ore18 months0 re-keyed
- 19 OctCoking coal12 months0 re-keyed
- 19 OctLNG24 months0 re-keyed
Integrations
Built from source data, not re‑keyed spreadsheets.
Volcan connects to your price feeds, terminals, rail and inbox, and brings the data in automatically from the systems a commodity business already deals with. Nobody types it in twice.
Price reporting agencies and exchanges
- Argus
- GLOBALcoal
- ICE
- SGX
- Macquarie
Forward curves and index prices over FTP, SFTP, HTTP or automated web retrieval, on your own subscriptions.
FX rates
- European Central Bank
Reference rates pulled daily, driving FX-translated P&L and revaluation.
Ports and coal terminals
- NCIG
- PWCS
A live link to NCIG's logistics system for the shipping stem, stockpiles and outages, plus PWCS shipping-stem import.
Rail
- ARTC paths
- Rail plans
Rail paths, plans and schedules, with an automated daily reconciliation of planned against actual.
Your inbox
- Dedicated mailbox
Reports emailed in by terminals, rail operators and counterparties are loaded automatically. Unknown senders are quarantined.
Your workbooks
- Excel
Mine plans, contract and shipment registers, quality results, forecasts and port charges load as they are, with no reformatting.
Volcan
- Curves
- Positions
- Cargoes
- Tonnes
- Audit
Scheduled reports
Emailed automatically to the people who need them.
Invoices, statements and letters
Produced as PDF and Word from your own templates.
General-ledger codes
Trades and invoices carry your GL codes, so figures line up with your ERP's chart of accounts.
Invoicing and correspondence
Paperwork that fills itself in.
Invoices, statements and counterparty letters come from your own templates, with merge fields filled from the trade, the contract and the cargo. Reports can be scheduled and emailed.
The invoice follows the cargo you blended above.
Provisional invoice
To {{counterparty.name}}
Cargo of thermal coal shipped per {{vessel.name}}, bill of lading quantity {{cargo.bl_tonnes}}, at a calorific value of {{cargo.quality.cv}}.
| Adjusted price per tonne | {{price.adjusted}} |
| Provisional payment, 90% | {{invoice.amount}} |
Due {{payment.due_date}}
Control and audit
Corrections add. They never overwrite.
Executed trades are append-only: a correction is a reversing entry, never an edit. Every change to other records is logged with its before and after values.
| # | Ref | Entry | Quantity | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | C-1042 | Buy · Thermal coal · Jun-26 | +75,000 t | 118.50 |
| 2 | C-1047 | Sell · Thermal coal · Jul-26 | −60,000 t | 124.00 |
| 3 | S-2210 | Swap sell · Thermal coal · Jun-26 | −50,000 t | 121.25 |
Change log
- Counterparty · Sample Buyer Co. LtdPayment terms30 days45 days
- Cargo · MV Example SpiritDischarge portTBNPort B
Access by user, entity and capability
Grant each person exactly what they need, per legal entity and per capability.
Many entities, one install
Run every legal entity in one installation, each with its own books and reporting currency.
Your data kept apart
Each organisation's data is isolated from every other's.
Why Volcan
Physical first. Clear enough for the whole team.
Physical first
Built around cargoes, quality and tonnes, with paper trades in the same book. Not a financial system with the physical side bolted on.
Covers the producer side
Volcan follows bulk material from the mine plan through stockpiles, rail and terminal to the vessel and the invoice, not only the trading book.
Fast to deploy, simple to use
Designed for the operations, logistics and shipping staff who use it every day, not only for traders.
- Fast, filterable list views across the whole book
- Saved personal layouts
- Runs in the browser, nothing to install
- Passwordless sign-in by emailed link
Where Volcan fits
Volcan is price risk management. It records trades after they are executed; it does not route orders. It is not a general ledger or a payments system, and it sits comfortably beside the ones you already run.
See your book in Volcan.
Volcan is licensed and deployed for each client. Book a demo and we'll walk you through it with commodities and workflows that look like yours.