London, 26 May 2011

Cleartrade Exchange is to roll out its state-of-the-art trade execution and processing platform on 2nd June, creating the world’s first electronic venue for the major commodity derivatives markets for iron ore, steel, freight and fertilizers. Cleartrade Exchange provides free-of-charge, market-discovery screens, enabling live trade, price and volume access across multiple commodities globally; it will also allow some of the world’s biggest commodity trading companies to trade electronically across these products.

Richard Baker, CEO of Cleartrade Exchange, said: “Cleartrade Exchange is the only platform which gives banks, commodity traders, brokers and ship-owners instant and unparalleled access to live prices across iron ore, steel, freight and fertilizer derivatives, as well as the option of trade support and execution via brokers, should it be needed.”

With Cleartrade Exchange trades can be combined across the different product types, saving clients as much as 40% in cross-margining fees at the clearing house. It also facilitates live block trading, full straight-through processing (STP) and risk management reporting to give users a new, sophisticated but simple solution for derivatives trading.

On 5th May Cleartrade Exchange, together with Drewry, launched the World Container Index (WCI), a global index used by physical and derivatives market participants to manage freight risk. Following this launch the next product group to be added to the Cleartrade Exchange will be the emerging market in container freight swaps, settled against the WCI, covering physical routes on Trans-Atlantic, Trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe trades.

Freight, iron ore, steel, and fertilizer markets

• Freight derivatives volumes have improved this quarter; with prices set for more volatility, the time is right to accelerate the deployment of additional commodities on the Cleartrade Exchange platform, offering economies of scale and significant cross-commodity trade opportunities for members.

• Iron ore swaps are on course to hit a new record for volumes traded of 100 million tonnes this year. The price for iron ore delivered into China recently peaked at close to $185 per tonne, more than 50% higher than last summer.

• China’s crude steel production continues to rise, with output in the first ten days of May hitting a new record of just under 1.95 million tonnes per day.

• Price volatility in the fertilizer market has seen the Fob Egypt Urea price per tonne almost double from $233/tonne in May 2010 to $437/tonne May 2011.

Ends --

www.thecleartrade.com