London, 9 May 2025 — Global Tea, a leading UK-based distributor, has transformed its international trade operations by adopting Enigio’s trace:original digital envelope solution. Released last year, the solution has dramatically reduced the time and complexity involved in exchanging critical trade documents, offering businesses like Global Tea faster, more secure, and cost-effective processes.
Before adopting trace:original, Global Tea was using traditional paper-based methods to manage international trade documents, which required physical transport, manual signatures, and time-consuming checks. The shift to trace:original has streamlined this process, allowing all required documents—such as seaway bills and promissory notes—to be securely transferred within minutes, aligning with the fast-paced nature of modern global trade.
Now, Global Tea digitises and places all necessary trade documents, including originals issued by Maersk, into the trace:original digital envelope once a week and transfers the documents to Lloyds for verification and secure holding. The bank then arranges for a digital promissory note to be issued via trace:original, which then enables Lloyds to allow for collection of the goods to take place. Switching from a paper-based process to entirely digital has cut the process of transferring documents between each party from taking several days or more to seconds, allowing Global Tea to maintain tight control over its global operations.
Jon Boran, Head of Future Trade Products at Lloyds said:
“We are always looking at ways to digitalise and streamline processes to enable us to help our clients drive efficiencies in their businesses, and our work with Enigio for Global Tea is a good example of that. Moving to an entirely digital process has significantly reduced the time it takes for Global Tea to complete a trade transaction – safely and securely – allowing them to trade more efficiently on a global scale.”
Global Tea’s Rhodrick Kalumpha, Group Finance Controller commented:
“Before we switched to trace:original, it could take up to a week to manage the documents required to complete international shipments. Now we do it in just a few minutes once a week, allowing us to meet deadlines with ease and improve our service to suppliers and logistics partners.”
Lars Karlsson, Global Head of Trade & Customs Consulting at Maersk, explained:
“As a mover of goods and integrator of trade, predictability and speed is critical for us in ensuring that goods are delivered on time. With trace:original the entire process of document exchange becomes part of the seamless flow of goods. There’s no waiting for documents to catch up, and that helps us keep everything on track.”
Alex Waites, Executive Director at Enigio remarked:
“The digital envelope is central to the ongoing digitalisation of trade processes. It’s fast, secure, and environmentally friendly. Businesses can now replace slow, manual, paper-based systems with a modern, efficient solution that enhances every part of the trade flow.”
About Enigio
Enigio is a tech company offering the open network for digital trade, enabling businesses to securely exchange all trade documents—such as bills of exchange, promissory notes, and eBLs —without registration or platform barriers. Enigio’s trace:original solution ensures seamless document transfer, legal validity, and full interoperability, helping businesses replace paper workflows and scale digital trade with ease.
Lloyds’ support for businesses
- Lloyds supports more than one million UK businesses with leading digital and relationship banking services, as they start up, grow, thrive and trade internationally.
- Through a network of relationship teams based across the UK, as well as internationally, it delivers a mix of local understanding and global expertise necessary to provide long-term support to its clients to help businesses fulfil their growth aspirations.
- It offers a broad range of financing beyond term lending, which spans import and export trade finance, structured and asset finance, securitisation facilities and capital market funding.
- Its product specialists provide bespoke financial services and solutions, including tailored cash management, international trade, treasury and risk management services.
Media and press contact:
Solveig Rundquist, Marketing & Communications Manager, solveig.rundquist@enigio.com