Europe’s new online trading platform Covalent successfully launched

After months of careful listening to some of the biggest olefin players in Europe, the custom made online trading platform Covalent has been launched and can proudly inform about the completion of its first ethylene spot trade, managing director Cedric Villiere announced on Thursday.

"It’s an important step for us," Villiere said, "we started developing the platform in January and now we see the first deal happen in September. This is amazingly quick."

The Covalent platform was born of an idea to help European ethylene players optimise trade flows, increase reach, saving time and protecting assets in this increasingly volatile and unpredictable market environment.

It went live on 15 August, and since then, the first user registered bids and offers.

Other petrochemical products such as propylene and aromatics are going to be added in the following release phases.

“During the developing phases we are constantly in close cooperation with the industry and adjust our platform based on their needs in order to provided a tool that is useful, user-friendly and exactly what is needed,” Villiere added.

The spot deal was for 1,000 tonnes of ethylene, sold at €875/tonne FCA Lillo basis, for October delivery.