What do wineries, beauty and healthcare businesses have in common? They are three industries that our Trade Finance team at Scottish Pacific are hearing from with increasing regularity.

These industries, along with specialised manufacturers such as meat producers and defence force equipment specialists, are increasingly looking to secure finance so they can follow up on export opportunities.

There has also been, over the past six months, increased demand for export funding from technology companies specialising in systems and servers.

For these and other Australian SMEs looking to export, trade finance and debtor finance can offer quick and easy solutions to fund their export ventures.

Exporters typically utilise bill facilities or export debtor finance as the main way to fund overseas trading.

This may be supported by a letter of credit to secure the transaction.

In December 2015 Scottish Pacific was named ‘Best Trade Finance Provider 2015’ at the Annual International Trade Finance Global Excellence Awards, for major contributions to the global Trade Finance sector.

Export Finance Case Study – How to grow a business

A catering equipment supply business was looking to grow and asked Scottish Pacific whether they were suitable candidates for Export Finance.

This ambitious SME had recently been awarded a large number new contracts with hotels and airlines in Australia and overseas, and needed extra working capital to keep up with their sales growth.

Scottish Pacific provided a fully-tailored suite of working capital facilities of up to $1 million via:

  • A debtor finance facility that provides funding secured against Australian receivables in AUD & USD;
  • An export finance facility secured against overseas receivables in AUD, USD & NZD;
  • An import finance facility.

This supply business’ expansion to international markets is now full steam ahead because the Scottish Pacific Export Finance facility is providing funding for sales to businesses in 20 different countries and across three currencies (AUD, NZD and USD).

This exporter chose Scottish Pacific because multiple facilities (debtor finance, import finance and export finance) were available from the one provider and the total facility limits of $1 million were attractive compared with the $200,000 in total facilities previously provided by their bank.

Author: Craig Michie, Head of Trade Finance Scottish Pacific 

A one-stop working capital solution that simplifies managing customers domestically and overseas is an attractive option for Australia’s growing number of small business exporters.