Thames Technology secures £3.9m market expansion facility

Specialist card manufacturer Thames Technology has secured £3.9m in funding from IGF for expansion into the fintech market.

Thames Technology develops, manufactures, personalises, and distributes payment, gift, loyalty, and commercial cards.

It manufactures over 200 million cards every year, distributing them to over 60 countries. Customers range from government bodies and retail giants to fintech and holiday firms.

Following investment by BGF, the Business Growth Fund, in 2013, the company has been steadily transforming into a professionally managed corporate. A new senior leadership team has been brought in to drive investment and change across the organisation.

Robin Hilton, chief finance officer of Thames Technology, said: “We were seeing an explosion of fintech across the market and opportunities to grow revenue.

“To take advantage of these opportunities we needed to undertake a complete company transformation. This was never going to be an easy task and relied on a financial partner to support our increased working capital requirements.”

During the early stages of the transformation, Thames partnered with an asset-based lender. In 2018, however, Thames approached Dave Edwards, partner at FRP Advisory, to source better working capital and ensure the liquidity of its assets was being maximised.

The year prior, Thames invested £2m in plant machinery, a huge asset - and opportunity - that was underutilised. Dave Edwards analysed several ABLs and concluded that Independent Growth Finance (IGF) offered the strongest asset-based lending facility.

He explained, “Our role in these situations is to put rigour in the process. We speak to six or more shortlisted lenders, secure terms from at least half of those and finally filter down to one or two.

“This means clients can be sure they are getting the best outcome; the highest amount of lending, ongoing certainty, and flexibility around the usage of the facility.”

In total, £3.9m was secured in the form of invoice discounting and plant and machinery.

Last year saw order volumes increase and Thames anticipate sales will continue growing by around 20 per cent through 2019.

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