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30 March 2010

Amada initiative beats credit crunch

With many UK manufacturers finding it tough to secure finance to fulfil this year’s capital equipment investment plans, Amada UK, a leading supplier of sheet metal machinery, has announced the availability of additional funds to help its customers finance new acquisitions. In fact, if necessary, the company is in a position to provide finance for all new and used Amada machines supplied throughout the course of 2009.

“The availability of extra funds addresses the current trend of having busy customers that cannot secure funding for new investments from traditional sources such as banks or finance companies due to the credit crunch,” says Alan Parrott, managing director of Amada UK.

Strong track record
While the announcement of additional funds will come as a welcome boost to credit-strapped UK manufacturers, Amada is far from new to the provision of finance: the company has in fact been funding customer purchases since the early 1990s. While the original idea was to help start-up companies with no credit history during the previous recession, today the company finances more than 60% of all the equipment it supplies – a statistic that reflects dwindling credit availability from mainstream sources and greater numbers of customers attracted to Amada’s clear, quick and easy funding package.

“Amada’s flexible finance plan is self funded and tailored to match individual customer requirements,” says Mr Parrott. “There are no third parties involved, so the decision making process is clear and easy with no hidden costs. Furthermore, no personal guarantees are needed as Amada secures the loan against the equipment.”

As an additional benefit to manufacturers, Amada’s funding package is a fixed rate scheme in which as well as the machine, the buyer can include maintenance plans, software, tooling and even consumables to give a fixed monthly cost while ensuring the machine’s reliability and performance are at the optimum for the whole of its life. Further advantages of Amada finance include:
very competitive rates

  • no arrangement fees or other hidden costs
  • new or used machines can be financed
  • only a small deposit is required (or a machine made by another manufacturer can be used to form part of the deposit if preferred)
  • finance transactions with Amada do not influence credit ratings
  • HP allows capital allowances to be offset against tax

“We believe that the difference between Amada and the banks is the objective,” explains Mr Parrott. “Banks and finance companies quite rightly need to maximise interest while protecting their investors’ money. With Amada, finance is a tool to sell manufacturing solutions and make the customer successful. This way we ensure they can continue to invest in new technology from Amada in the future. I believe we are unique in the UK in having our own funds and finance system to support customers and this has never been more important than in today’s challenging economic environment.”

Universal benefits
One UK company that has been using Amada finance for more than 10 years is Universal Fabrications, and its managing director Carl Smith is more than satisfied with the advantages provided by the arrangement.

“One of the biggest benefits for us is that maintenance and even tooling can be included in the fixed monthly cost, which simplifies budgeting enormously,” he says. “Furthermore, the flexibility of the scheme makes it easy for the company to upgrade to the latest technology with very little change to the monthly amount we pay.”

While finance is a strong tie between Amada and the customer, funding is just one of the services provided by the Kidderminster-based machine tool company to support the user for the entire machine life.

“From a total staff of 135 in the UK, we have almost 100 engineers directly supporting our customers, not only to maximise uptime but also to ensure they are getting the very best from our products,” concludes Mr Parrott.


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