CommodityFirst

About us

CommodityFirst is committed to help optimise and grow
your commodity trading and technology business.

Meet our management team

Mikael Nordström

Managing Partner, Co-Founder

”To reduce their carbon footprint, many energy utilities and energy majors are actively working to eliminate their dependence on fossil fuels, which in turn is leading to shrinking asset portfolios. Compensating for such a loss requires new strategies such as expanding into new markets and geographies, managing new commodities such as LNG, and not least accelerating the development of renewable assets. We help large international players to understand and implement the capabilities, work processes, and systems support, necessary to realize their new strategies.

Mats Forsman

Senior Partner, Co-Founder

In an ever-changing trading environment with urgent calls for green transformation, most organizations face similar challenges, with important and critical questions around key capabilities. The expected growth and increased frequency of data originating from intermittent assets and external changes in the short- term markets put additional challenges on the existing trading systems landscape. We help clients to successfully navigate these difficulties and complex topics by bridging trading and technology through a mix of business and IT savvy people.”

Petter Torp

Senior Partner

Today, all trading organizations are facing the same challenges when it comes to running efficient and low-cost trading operations. In a changing market environment, the challenges range from compliance with regulatory requirements to standardizing systems and processes, at the same time staying flexible enough to quickly capture new business and scalable enough to cope with increased transaction volumes. We help trading companies to design, optimize and automate trade processes that support new business activities and growth.”

Tim Haaijman

Partner

“Almost all commodity trading organizations are challenged by a technical debt of many decades. This is becoming increasingly pivotal to delivering competitive advantage and risk management in markets affected by climate targets, geo-politics, increased volatility, and expanding algorithmic trading activity. We support trading organizations with their technological advancements, delivering near-real-time data capabilities for decision-making, and systems for handling significant growth of trading activities and data volumes.”

We know the commodity trading industry

CommodityFirst is founded and managed by people with senior management experience from the commodity, technology, and management consulting industries. CommodityFirst partners with utilities, trading houses and investment banks to address their challenges and help grow, optimise, and transform their business.

European presence but global reach

We operate predominantly in Europe where we run and participate in regional and global projects, and together with partners we can deliver and operate on a global basis.

Selection of current and recent assignments:

  • A €75m transformation program for an international energy trading company

  • Multimillion pan-European asset optimization and scheduling solution for a large European energy utility

  • Multimillion risk management solution to enable business growth for a leading renewables company.

Best-in-class knowledge, expertise, and people

  • In depth industry knowledge – Most of CommodityFirst’s consultants have a background from the Commodity Trading industry.
  • Trading and Technology expertise – Staff consists of several former C-level managers, trading desk heads, and technology staff.
  • Mindset, attitude, and commitment – Recurring feedback from clients is “Transparent”, “Engaged”, and “Delivery Oriented”.

We understand what it takes

CommodityFirst was founded in 2011. In addition to decades of business, management, and technology consulting experience, all key consultants have in depth experience from the commodity trading industry as former C-level managers, trading desk heads, originators, risk managers, lead architects and developers.

We have worked with many international commodity trading companies

CommodityFirst fully covers trading, operations, and technology, and the strength lies primarily in managing large programs, realising strategies, developing and transforming businesses and technology, and implementing processes and business critical applications.

We have extensive experience from delivering successful projects

Based on the broad background and experience of the key consultants, CommodityFirst is able to cover several roles with fewer resources, and hence has a very strong track record of delivering the most complex projects with agreed functionality, on time and on budget.

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Case Studies