Eighty-four staff, three presses, one aerospace contract they could not fund alone. What convinced us, and what we do next.
We have completed an investment in a precision components manufacturer in Central Europe. Eighty-four staff, three presses, and a first-tier aerospace contract they had won on merit and could not fund on their own balance sheet.
The shape of the problem was familiar. A contract of that size needs tooling, a fourth press and a working capital line to cover the gap between building parts and being paid for them. Their bank was willing on the equipment and unwilling on the working capital, which is the half that actually decides whether the contract can be served.
Three things convinced us.
The first was the order book behind the headline contract. A single large customer is a risk, not an asset; here the new contract sat on top of eleven years of smaller work for four other buyers, none of whom had left.
The second was the shop floor. We spent a day there before we spent an hour on the model. The presses were older than we expected and better maintained than we expected, and the setters could tell us what each one would and would not hold without looking anything up.
The third was that the family were clear about what they wanted to keep. They were not selling the business; they were funding a step they could not take alone, and they said so in the first meeting rather than the fourth.
What happens next is deliberately unglamorous. The equipment is ordered, the working capital facility is in place, and one of our partners sits with them monthly for the first year — not to run the business, which they do better than we would, but so that the next constraint is found early rather than at the point it becomes urgent.
We will not be naming the company. Both sides agreed that a supplier's customers are their own business, and an announcement that helps us and complicates them is not a trade we are willing to make.