Soft commodities

Our experience

Our trade and commodity finance team has established a leading reputation in soft commodities in emerging and transitional markets. The team regularly acts as lead international legal counsel for soft commodity producers, traders, major international banks and borrowers throughout all commodity finance structures and developing markets.

Our team has extensive experience in the financing of the cultivation, production, refining, warehousing, transport and export of a vast range of soft commodities including tobacco, coffee, cocoa, sugar, grains and edible oils, paper, cotton, textiles and carbon credits.

We have a great deal of experience in commodity and trade associations, including GATFA (The Grain and Feed Trade Association), RSA/SAL (The Refined Sugar Association/The Sugar Association of London), FOSFA International (Federation of Oils, Seeds and Fats Associations) and we often deal with biofuels/biomass matters on the downstream. We are familiar with trade associations’ standard contract terms.

We also have considerable expertise in trade related disputes (including charterparties, cargo and bills of lading, insurance claims, ship arrests and affreightment disputes).

Global reach

We have particular expertise in soft commodities throughout Africa, Russia, the CIS (formerly the USSR), South America, Asia and Australasia, and have recently completed soft commodity finance deals in Kenya, Senegal, Cameroon, Tanzania, Malawi, South Africa, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Brazil, Uruguay, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Australia. We are ideally placed to meet the constantly changing needs of the soft commodity trade and finance industry.

Recognition

We were voted Best Trade Finance Law Firm - Asia 2009 - Trade Finance Magazine. We were also highly commended in the category of “best commodity and structured commodity finance / trade finance law firm” in 2008 for the Trade Finance Magazine Awards for Excellence.