suppliers to mines

financing for: Purchase Order, Contract/Project, Bridging, Medium Term and Specialised Equipment

mining houses
for your suppliers

structured financing program & early payment program – for your suppliers

large mining contractors
for your suppliers

structured financing program & early payment program – for your SME suppliers

OEMs
for your SME clients

close more sales to your SME clients with Purchase Order Finance and Specialised Equipment Finance

how Spartan helps the mining ecosystem ?

  • experience in financing SME suppliers within the mining sectors’ supply chain
  • financing for Purchase Order, Contract or Project, Bridging, Medium Term and Specialised Equipment

Spartan’s role in the mining sector …

The mining sector is a vital component of the South African economy and provides significant opportunities to SMEs suppling the mines and to SMEs supplying larger mining contractors.

It’s also an advantageous entry point for entrepreneurs to start and grow a stable business.

  • However, mining sector projects or purchase orders – require SME suppliers to have working capital and/or capex funding.
  • This is often a barrier to executing these projects/orders.

This is where Spartan comes in: we understand your space, we understand your challenges – and structure the funding to support your growth as a SME supplier to the mining sector.

specialist in 

financing SME suppliers to the mining sector

Our criteria …

We are strictly focused on SMEs … this is who we finance.

You can be considered for finance if:

  • minimum finance amount from R1M up to R25M
  • minimum R10M annual turnover
  • alternatively, R5M to R10M annual turnover, if there is a growth context [e.g. a contract, project or large PO]

We don’t serve start-ups.

SME Suppliers to Mines

Projects or Purchase Orders from mines – despite being positive news, often come with challenges for SME suppliers:

  1. often these projects or POs are larger than previous projects/POs – triggering their need for working capital and/or capex funding
  2. but, SME suppliers’ financial history is unlikely to justify the larger working capital and/or capex funding
  3. additionally, the funding needs to be secured fast – as there is pressure from the mine to deliver against an operational deadline

This is where Spartan comes in: we understand this space, we understand these challenges – and structure the funding to support their growth as SME suppliers to the mining sector.

Mining Houses

Mining houses also need to appoint emerging suppliers to their mines

  • in appointing these SME suppliers – the mining houses often bears the brunt when:
    • the SME supplier has inconsistent or late performance issues – due to cashflow constraints
    • it’s pestered for early payments – due to suppliers’ cashflow constraints & poor planning
  • our answers to this are: our specialisation in the mining industry, our structured financing options & our early payment program – for your SME suppliers

Large Mining Contractors

Large mining contractors often need to appoint SME contractors/suppliers

  • in appointing these SMEs – the large contractor often bears the brunt when:
    • the SME supplier has inconsistent or late performance issues – due to cashflow constraints
    • it’s pestered for early payments – due to suppliers’ cashflow constraints & poor planning
  • our answers to this are: our specialisation in the mining industry, our structured financing options & our early payment program – for your SME suppliers

OEMs to Mining Suppliers

OEMs often lose sales to their SME clients [i.e. SME suppliers to mines] …

  • due to those SME clients not having the cash or credit limit to buy
  • those SMEs clients often receive larger POs from mines – than their credit limit with the OEM will allow
  • Spartan’s answer to this challenge is our financing program for orders from your SME clients

What our Mining Suppliers say …

“we needed financing that would give us more than the 1 or 2 trucks at a time – we got a contract with one of our biggest clients and they required that we should have more trucks”

Lindiwe Ntsabo, MD of SSN Transport (transporter to mining sector)

“Spartan offered us the finance for the 5 trucks, we definitely wanted to get all 5 at once – since we’ve started we have never got such a big fleet from the word go in one finance application”

Lindiwe Ntsabo, MD of SSN Transport (transporter to mining sector)

“the impact it has made in our business is more productivity, more income and more work … we’re also creating more jobs as we had to hire more truck drivers”

Lindiwe Ntsabo, MD of SSN Transport (transporter to mining sector)

How it works ..?

Timelines

Applications-to-Payout in approx. 10 days

These are the steps/stages that drive our overall timeline:

  • Application Stage: depends on how quickly you provide required info
  • Assessment Stage: a Credit Analyst engages & assesses – typically 1-3 days
  • Interview Stage: our Credit Committee interviews you
  • Implementation Stage: signing contracts & fulfilling approval conditions. Ranges from 1 day to few weeks [depends on complexity and your responsiveness]
  • Pay-Out Stage: within 24hrs of completion of Implementation Stage

Your responsiveness & cooperation – significantly affects timelines.

Assessment

Credit Analyst engages & asseses > the Credit Committee interviews you

Once we have your application and all supporting docs a Credit Analyst reviews this and will ask for additional docs (as required) and will arrange for a Credit Interview where you meet directly with our Credit Committee.

Pay-Out

After Term Sheet; Agreements; Conditions met

Based on a signed & completed term sheet and our compliance team having checked that all the paperwork is good-to-go… we then proceed to pay-out the same day or next day.

A few FAQs …

We do not serve start-ups, micro or lifestyle businesses.

You can be considered for finance if:

  • minimum finance amount from R1M up to R25M
  • minimum R10M annual turnover
  • alternatively, R5M to R10M annual turnover, if there is a growth context [e.g. a contract, project or large PO]

Depending on your unique situation, Spartan can help by crafting a finance option tailored to your exact requirements and needs.

Such as:

Our minimum finance amount is R1M and can go up to R25M. Some of our finance facilities can be structured as revolving facilities, where appropriate.

  • Bridging Finance: 1-3 months
  • Working Capital Finance: 1-3 months or 6-12 months
  • Growth Finance: 12-60 months
  • Specialised Asset Finance: 12-60 months

From the time that we have received all your information:

  • +- 5-10 days to approval
  • sometimes quicker or longer depending on your responsiveness

  • Spartan finances in a no/low collateral context, with an approx 5-10 day turnaround
  • therefore we supplement your bank rather than substitute it
  • our pricing is relative to the above
  • however, against usual secured overdraft rates – our costing is reasonable

  • we adopt a structured/customised approach to funding SMEs
  • we supplement a bank we do not substitute a bank
  • this means our clients utilise the banks for their traditional/vanilla finance needs & Spartan supplements this for their specialised/growth needs
  • your bank will typically require a higher degree & higher quality of collateral where Spartan as an alternative funder focuses more on backing an entrepreneur
  • Spartans average turnaround time is 5-10 days – for highly specialised/complex funding needs

Documents we require include:

  • online or offline finance application
  • historical financial information (for Spartan to assess business retrospectively) – this includes AFS/Management accounts and Bank account details/statements
  • business owners personal assets – we do secured and unsecured lending, this helps us with our risk mitigation

Why no business plan? We believe in meeting with the entrepreneur in order to understand the business holistically – from their perspective.

  • we define collateral as a tangible asset, with a liquid, secondary market [e.g. property]
  • we define security as a legal instrument that provides some comfort [e.g. cession of debtors]
  • depending on the nature and context of the financing required we will often require some form of collateral/security however
  • as an alternative financier we also try to give consideration to the needs of the business and its context
  • in certain cases security/collateral can take forms more relevant to purchase orders and contracts

  • we focus exclusively on South African SME’s
  • if your business is based in South Africa but also operates outside of South Africa then we may be able to finance you

Contact us …

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