In the late 1960s US aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas received substantial amounts of canned ham as part of a DC-9 deal it closed with Yugoslavia's official airline JAT. However, the meat products were impossible to shift and the company resorted to giving the cans away to staff. 

In 1974 Pepsi became the first Western brand to be produced in the Soviet Union thanks to a groundbreaking barter deal, which involved swapping concentrate of the cola for Stolichnaya vodka – the rouble was subject to an embargo, so companies had to think creatively. In fact, PepsiCo was the sole Stoli distributor in the US until 2009 when the contract passed to William Grant & Sons.

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PepsiCo also traded concentrate of its sugary drink for Soviet tomato paste as part of the arrangement according to the BBC. Back in those days the food and drinks company owned Pizza Hut, and the puree was used on the chain's pizzas in Europe.

In 1979 Pierre Cardin sewed up a landmark deal with the Chinese government. In exchange for the French designer's expert advice, China agreed to sell his company's wares in China and pay royalties in high-quality silk and cashmere.

New Zealand's Department of Trade and Industry turned to good old-fashioned bartering in 1982 when it clinched a $150 million deal with Iran to supply the Middle Eastern country with lamb, which was exchanged for oil. That's the equivalent of a $400 million (£303m) deal in today's money.

A nation that is big on bartering, Nigeria offloaded a hefty $500 million-worth of oil to Brazil in 1985, the equivalent of $1.2 billion (£910m) in today's money. In return, the South American country sent over 250,000 tons of sugar and 500,000 Volkswagen assembly kits.

The government of Zaire, known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1997, put its ample reserves of scrap iron to excellent use in 1989 by swapping a sizeable batch of the spent metal for 12 Italian-manufactured locomotives, which ended up running on the country's state-owned railway.

Seasoned barterer PepsiCo went all out in 1990 when it finalised a $3 billion deal with the USSR to swap Pepsi concentrate for vodka and believe it or not, 10 tankers and freighters, which it planned to lease and sell overseas. The so-called deal of the century was the biggest a US company ever signed with the Soviets.

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The Malaysian government came up with a novel way to help pay for 18 Russian MiG-29 fighter jets back in 1994. The cash-strapped southeast Asian country brokered a deal with Russia worth $550 million (the equivalent of $955 million (£724m) today), settling almost 20% of the bill with refined palm oil.

In 1995 US aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas agreed to install a sophisticated system of insect traps in order to close a $250 million deal with the UAE for Apache helicopters. That would be worth $422 million (£320m) in today's money. At the time the emirate was plagued with a white fly infestation that was wiping out its vegetable crops.

A super-popular foodstuff throughout southeast Asia, sticky rice from Thailand took the place of hard currency in a major aircraft deal back in 1996 when Indonesian aviation company Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara (IPTN) traded two of its cargo planes for 110,000 tonnes of the glutinous grain.

The Thai government worked out a deal with Lockheed Martin in 2005 to swap thousands of tons of chicken for a number of F16 fighter jets. Commenting on the exchange, the then-Thai defence minister Thammarak Isarangura quipped, “they both have wings and they can both fly”. Unfortunately a coup in Thailand the following year scuppered the arrangement.

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In 2008 the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) teamed up with the China Railway Engineering Corporation to wrap up a mega countertrade deal worth $9 billion, the equivalent of $10.7 billion (£8.1bn) today. In exchange for colossal quantities of cobalt and copper, the Chinese state-owned company agreed to construct miles of railways and roads, scores of hospitals, and more.

Mirroring somewhat the deal struck between Malaysia and Russia in 1994, the government of Indonesia announced in 2017 that it would exchange palm oil, coffee and other commodities for 11 Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets. Such an arrangement has been seen as a way to get around the trade sanctions imposed by the US against Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other countries who work with them.

Severely restricted due to US sanctions, Iran recently resurrected a deal it had with India way back when to exchange oil for basmati rice. Iran is actually the biggest export market for the high-quality fragrant grain.

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