Mining giant Anglo American deploys AspectCTRM for global marketing and trading business

15 May 2018 – Aspect Enterprise Solutions, an ION Investment Group Company, and Anglo American Marketing Limited, the marketing arm of one of the world’s biggest mining companies and largest producer of platinum, are engaged in a multi-million-dollar partnership to replace existing in-house systems to support trading, hedging, operations and logistics across all Anglo American Marketing Limited’s commodities spanning precious metals, base metals, iron ore and coal. The system will be used to manage products throughout their supply chain from concentrates and ores through to refined metal.

On top of a vastly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and quicker go-live than Anglo’s previous vendor, Aspect was chosen for the proven strength of its risk management functionality and speed and performance of its in-memory database. This enables the calculation of all positions and P&L, both in real time during the day and when closing books at the end of the trading day. It takes just seconds in contrast to the multiple hours required by other solutions.

Aspect’s innovative scripting tools have also proven extremely powerful and key to the satisfaction of both the IT project team and system users. Continuous configuration through scripting, rather than costly, time-consuming code customization allows for rapid response to user feedback, resulting in a solution that fits business requirements like a glove.

“We are excited to expand our presence and reputation in the metals trading market through partnership with Anglo American. Aspect’s unique technology and configurability have been key to our expansion, and the key role that Aspect plays at Anglo American demonstrates our ability to deliver on our plans to be the pre-eminent metals solution for metals traders,” says Justin Howat, Aspect Sales Director – Metals & Mining.

Aspect’s flexibility has allowed Anglo American to build reports and workbenches within Aspect that were previously assumed to be built externally, resulting in an even bigger footprint for Aspect within Anglo American’s overall IT landscape than initially planned. AspectCTRM also integrates with SAP and other systems for seamless front-to-back-office support.

Anglo American’s existing roadmap calls for added concentrates functionality to cover platinum and copper concentrates, and complex allocations with the mapping of trades end-to-end, incorporating blending and the tracking of blended lots. It also includes expanded scope for the upstream mining group’s commercial activities.

About Aspect Enterprise Solutions
Aspect, an ION Investment Group Company, is the leading global provider of multi-commodity trade, risk and operations management applications delivered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in the cloud. With almost 500 customers in 90 countries, it’s one of the fastest growing firms with rapid deployment, affordable subscription fees, and immediate ROI for all size trading companies. Aspect has the only ETRM/CTRM software with pre-trade market data and analytics tools delivered on the same platform on desktop, tablet and mobile devices.