A UK manufacturer with international ambitions needed a banking partner who understood both its working capital cycle and its global growth plans. During a pandemic. When most high street banks were not lending.
Plum Products is a Lincolnshire-based family business with more than 30 years of history as the UK's leading supplier of children's outdoor play equipment. The business sells internationally, imports product from overseas suppliers, and operates on complex working capital cycles that most standard banking facilities are not designed to serve.
When we started working with the Plum Products team, they were looking to move their banking relationship and to find a partner who could provide both the invoice finance and trade finance facilities their business genuinely needed, alongside the international banking capability to support their expansion plans.
This was not a simple deal. The business had global supply chains, seasonal trading patterns, and ambitions that went well beyond the UK market.
Understanding the working capital cycle properly, the gap between paying overseas suppliers and receiving payment from customers was essential to structuring the right facility.
The timing added complexity. This deal was completed during the Covid-19 pandemic, at a point when high street bank lending was severely constrained and most lenders had significantly reduced their appetite for new business.
We worked closely with the Plum Products management team to build a thorough picture of the business, its structure, its trading position, its supply chain, and its international growth plans. We then presented a selected group of lenders from our panel with a structured deal proposal that gave them a genuine understanding of what the business needed and why.
Santander UK was identified as the right partner with both the invoice finance capability and the international banking infrastructure to support Plum's ambitions properly.
Santander provided a full suite of facilities matched to Plum's working capital cycle and international trading requirements. The deal was completed during a period when most high street banks were not actively lending, a direct result of the quality of the preparation and the precision of the match.
Paul Schaffer, Managing Director of Plum Products, said: "The open and genuine dialogue with the team at Santander has provided the basis for a strong, long-term partnership. Their support will allow us to advance to the next step of our journey as an international business."
Graham Watts, Invoice Finance Director at Santander UK, said: "By fully understanding the working capital cycles within their supply chain and the scale of their international ambitions, we have been able to provide a suite of facilities and expertise to support the business as it continues to develop globally."
Paul's notes on this case
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