Five phases, and what fails at each one

Nothing here starts with a conversation. It starts with both companies proving they exist, that they are what they claim to be, and that the people acting for them are authorised to do so.

Verification covers the certificate of incorporation, tax registration, proof of registered address, the ownership and control structure including beneficial owners, and any export or trading licence the company holds. Each individual who will act for the company passes their own identity check, and acts for the company through a seat that carries one role. Sanctions screening runs alongside.

Verification documents are submitted into storage with no read path back through the product. Once filed they cannot be pulled out again — not by a counterparty, not by you, not by us through the interface. What is disclosed to the other side is your status, your country and how long you have been registered.

A buyer posts demand — a Letter of Intent describing what they want to buy. A seller posts supply — a Soft Corporate Offer describing what they hold. Both are the same object on the platform, pointed in opposite directions, and either side can answer the other.

You state the commodity, the quantity with its unit and basis, the specification — each element typical, guaranteed, a minimum or a maximum — origin, delivery terms and payment terms. Price is expressed the way this market expresses it: a fixed figure, or a benchmark with a differential above or below it.

Every intent carries an expiry, and on that date it leaves the board automatically rather than sitting there attracting offers on terms you have moved on from. If you already hold a signed LOI as a PDF, attach it and the assistant reads the terms out of it to fill the form for you to check; the letter stays with your company unless you choose to share it with the companies that answer.

A member company answers your intent in one of four ways: it accepts it, offers to take part of the quantity, counters with its own price or terms, or asks a question. Because both companies were verified before any of this, you are not deciding whether they are real — you are deciding whether the terms work.

Each answer opens a thread between the two companies, tied to the intent and private to them. A company answers an intent once; answering again returns it to the same thread. An intent posted without its company's name stays that way until its owner names itself to a company it is talking to.

Agreeing on an intent lands in a consignment: one side starts it from the intent's thread and invites the other as a party, who accepts or declines, and the intent's document list becomes the consignment's empty slots. Nelum generates no agreement and captures no signature, because the platform is not a party to your trade and a document it produced with signature blocks would be read as one it authored.

From there, there is no imposed sequence. A consignment is one party's purpose over a set of lots, and its documents are kept per lot: upload and label anything the trade needs, ask a linked party for anything you are missing and say why, and watch both accumulate in a record neither party can quietly alter. Files version rather than overwrite, removals stay visible, and message edits keep their previous text.

Payment — transfer, letter of credit, documentary collection — is arranged with your own banks, as it always was. Nelum holds no funds, operates no wallets and verifies no settlement.

A consignment finishes when its parties say it has. The party running it and each active party confirm, and it completes only when all of them have. Until then any confirmation can be withdrawn.

There is no stage counter closing a trade on anyone's behalf, because no two companies in this market run fulfilment the same way — and a platform that declares a trade finished when the buyer disagrees has not helped anybody.

Afterwards the record stays assembled: every document and version, every request and its answer, every message, and every party's confirmation, retained for the periods anti-money-laundering law requires.