Salus Platform brings new pools of capital to critical minerals trade, facilitating key transactions through digital finance

SINGAPORE. September 10, 2025 - Salus, a new digital trade finance platform, executes verified trade deals, supporting flows of critical minerals from Rwanda to the United States. The transactions connected a Singapore hedge fund to a Rwandan supplier and a US buyer, with payments settled instantly in stablecoins. 

Salus is built for physical commodities trade with a focus on critical minerals. The platform’s first transactions are in tantalum - a material used in capacitors for smartphones, electric vehicles, and data centres. Tantalum is one of many critical minerals constrained by a wider $2.5 trillion global trade finance gap. Smaller suppliers of this and other critical minerals across Africa and Latin America often struggle to access working capital, driving up costs and leaving supply chains unreliable. The critical minerals sector alone is valued at $500 billion annually, with demand expected to more than double by 2040, according to the IEA. 

“Our first trades confirm the model,” said Trevor Skidmore, Co-Founder of Salus and former Rio Tinto executive. “New capital is able to confidently fund minerals from source to export, with payments delivered instantly, opening reliable new supply corridors for buyers in the US and Europe.”

“This is where decades of real-world experience meet digital rails,” said James Rilett, former Head of Innovation at S&P Global and co-founder of Salus.  “We’ve built the hardware, legal frameworks, and contracts to make these trades fully verifiable and enforceable, and we have taken this on-chain."

With Salus, suppliers receive immediate funding. Buyers secure transparent and responsible supply, and investors gain exposure to a previously inaccessible asset class. Yields are often double-digit, over-collateralized against real cargoes of material the world needs. This is a world of high complexity but with short and insurable transaction cycles. The platform combines digital contracts, IoT-enabled custody, proprietary verification hardware, and enforceable legal frameworks, all running on the IOTA network for tamper-proof, real-time settlement.

Following the GENIUS Act, which established a clear federal regime for stablecoins in the US, programmable money is activated and begins searching for yield. Salus converts real-world complexity into live, tokenized asset-backed transactions, moving mineral cargo that previously struggled for funding.  The team behind Salus includes the founders of TradeFlow Capital, a leading innovator in digitized, physical commodity finance. This blend of blockchain infrastructure with deep commodity finance expertise positions Salus to scale rapidly in underserved markets.

“We’ve been extremely encouraged by the response. Platform acceptance is strong,  and our pipeline already spans 12 countries and 18 critical minerals,” shares Rilett. “2025 is seeing a real convergence of resource geopolitics and digital assets. We’re one of the few actually shipping a product rather than just publishing white papers, which is a really exciting place to be.” 

The platform is fully operational in Rwanda with additional jurisdictions across Africa and Latin America underway. It targets USD $100 million in trade flows by the end of 2025, and USD $1 billion in 2026.