ThinCats teams up with Alderburn Finance to fund Scottish marine trainer
THINCATS has sealed a deal with commercial finance broker Alderburn Finance and Stream Marine Training (SMT) to help the latter step up its cost efficiency and growth plans.
The peer-to-peer lending platform, which channels funds to small- and medium-sized enterprises, will help the Scottish training specialist cut time and overall costs as it plan to boost its consultancy services to the global maritime, oil and gas, renewables and construction sectors.
Edinburgh-based Alderburn Finance acted as a loan sponsor, as it vetted the borrower’s funding application and assisted ThinCats in the origination process.
The new batch of funding, which marks the first collaboration of the borrower with an alternative lender, will enable SMT to set up a 18,000 feet facility to compete with top-tier European peers, ThinCats said.
“It was a delight to be able to help SMT finance their ambitious plans for growth,” said the platform’s chief development officer Damon Walford.
“Due to the nature of marine training, finding the perfect facility can be tricky especially when it comes to looking at the cost implications of such a large-scale facility. Initially business funding was largely provided through equity and mezzanine debt, but when that was no longer able to help them grow further, alternative lending was the perfect solution for them.
“I am confident that it won’t be long before they have plans for even further expansion.”
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The SMT facility is hosted by Glasgow International Airport, in the proximity to the sea.
“At SMT, we were in a position to grow very rapidly, and provide services that are desperately needed by a range of industry sectors,” said the firm’s chief executive Martin White.
“However, we needed the right funding to enable us to take advantage of the opportunities. Alderburn and ThinCats fulfilled that role extremely well and now we can focus on cementing ourselves as one of the centres of training in Europe.”
The loan underpins ThinCats’s recent focus on new origination, and follows the appointment of NatWest SME veteran John Brooks as origination manager in June.
At the time of the appointment, Walford said he expected the second quarter of the year would mark a record level of lending for the platform, as the firm was readying “an incredibly diverse pipeline of loans.”