Trafigura has secured a lending facility from the Abu Dhabi Exports Office (Adex), the latest in a string of financing deals the trader has clinched with state export finance institutions and export credit agencies (ECAs).

Adex, the export finance arm of the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, is providing US$125mn of a US$135mn loan facility for Trafigura’s working capital needs and to support the trader’s purchase of “metals, minerals and refined hydrocarbons” from the United Arab Emirates.

Japanese lender SMBC will provide the remaining US$10mn for the two-year facility and acts as facility co-ordinator and agent, Trafigura says in a statement.

“The loan provided by Adex and SMBC would allow Trafigura to develop broader relations with Emirati exporters and increase the volume of imports of our strategic commodities,” says Mohamed Saif Al Suwaidi, director general of Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and chairman of Adex’s Exports Executive Committee.

“Such moves contribute to the UAE’s economic diversification efforts, increasing trade with the rest of the world, and enhancing the presence of Emirati goods in the international market.”

A Trafigura spokesperson tells GTR the company has committed to procuring a minimum amount of UAE goods, but declined to provide details.

Trafigura has shown an eagerness in recent months to work alongside official export credit providers on financing deals, although until now those deals were focused on securing imports, rather than exports.

SMBC also acted as the lender on a US$500mn facility for Trafigura, announced in February and backed by Italian ECA Sace, to underpin imports of raw materials such as non-ferrous metals to Italy.

In October and December last year the trader struck two deals guaranteed by German ECA Euler Hermes Aktiengesellschaft for the supply, respectively, of metals and natural gas to Germany.

The deal with Abu Dhabi also comes amid upheaval in Trafigura’s metal trading operations following its discovery that purported nickel shipments the trader purchased did not contain any nickel, in what the trader describes as an alleged fraud costing up to US$577mn.

Last month Trafigura announced that its former head of nickel and cobalt trading Socrates Economou was being replaced.