Asset finance

In 2003 Matt Tranby, Stuart Heldon and David Mortimer were running Watertank Team, a tank installation business, when their major supplier came up for sale. Parramatta Tankworks had been making water tanks since 1934. It was a company with a proud history, but now sales were stagnating. Believing the market for water tanks was strong and getting stronger - with the drought, water restrictions and consumers becoming more environmentally conscious -they merged the two businesses and Tankworks Australia was born.

However, nothing stretches your financial resources like rapid growth, and Tankworks needed a range of different financing tools to bridge the gap.

“The Commonwealth Bank helped us with an Asset Finance facility,” says Adrian Tischler, Tankworks Australia’s Chief Financial Officer. And after years of relying on an overdraft for short-term funds, Tankworks has also taken out a receivables finance facility. That allows them to borrow against invoices before they’ve been paid, speeding up cash flow.

“We’re exposed to small businesses who could be getting crunched for cash, and that’s starting to blow things out in terms of receivables,” says Tischler. “Receivables financing was the obvious option for us.

“You’ve got to be looking out for anything that could trip up growth, like cash flow or becoming so busy you don’t have time to do the important things right. All of a sudden you’re not a customer-focused organisation, you’re an inward-looking, problem solving organisation.”

Since then, they’ve increased turnover from around $1 million a year to more than $10 million, and significantly boosted profitability at the same time. They’ve also opened new manufacturing sites in Brisbane and Melbourne.

They also transformed the operational side of the business. “We’ve turned it from a craft-type process to a modern production line process,” says Tischler.