Cargill is one of the world’s largest food and agriculture companies and the biggest privately held company in the United States by revenue. Its Ocean Transportation division operates around 650 vessels and more than 4,500 voyages a year across global dry-bulk trade.
Building the customer portal behind Cargill’s maritime operations
Tailor spent almost two years building a customer portal for Cargill Ocean Transportation, bringing vessel movements, contracts and invoices into one product. When the technology later moved to an industry operator with its own engineering team, the original engagement ended. In 2025, Cargill returned to Tailor for a new generation of AI initiatives.
Client
Challenge
Customers and internal teams worked across routes, contracts, clauses and multimillion-dollar invoices in a sector still shaped by manual processes and fragmented information.
Cargill wanted a portal that could give customers a current view of maritime operations while operating within the governance, security and commercial sensitivity of a global organisation.
For Javier Sierra and the team leading the initiative, the challenge extended beyond shipping a web application. The product had to reflect how maritime operations work, earn adoption from people accustomed to established processes and remain dependable around financially significant information.
What we built
Tailor developed the portal using NestJS, Snowflake, hexagonal architecture and domain-driven design.
The product brought together:
Real-time vessel tracking across global routes.
Contract and clause management.
Invoice review and payment workflows.
A technical foundation capable of handling sensitive operational and financial data.
At its peak, the collaboration involved up to ten Tailor engineers working alongside Cargill’s teams.
Tailor Hub met the technical requirements of the project, but what we valued most was that they understood the governance complexity of an industry like maritime shipping. The technology they delivered changed how we work day to day, and their approach to collaboration and problem-solving has made them a partner we trust to keep innovating.
Javier Sierra - Digital Commercial Director at Cargill
What happened next
The first engagement began in 2023 and lasted almost two years. The portal and its continued development were later transferred to Besson Nautical, an industry operator with its own engineering organisation. Cargill remained a user of the technology, while ongoing ownership and development moved out of the original Tailor team.
In summer 2025, Cargill Ocean Transportation approached Tailor again. This time, the need was for two senior AI engineers capable of leading agentic initiatives inside the American group.
Impact
The portal became a substantial enough part of the maritime workflow to continue under a specialist industry owner. The trust established during its design and development brought Tailor back into Cargill for a new phase of work focused on AI engineering.