18 Dec Non-Traditional Fleet Funding for Nabuurs
Fleet funding is an important area of financing in logistics, but traditional lenders, such as banks, have not been able to meet the needs of the entire industry. In particular, credit is not always widely available or readily accessible.
Fortunately, financial technology is providing promising alternatives to traditional products & lenders. Among these are lease management software, crowdfunding, and fleet sharing. But how ready-to-use are these solutions? Can they essentially be used off-the-shelf, or do they need to be adapted to individual logistics company’s needs?
We put these questions to the test at the Logistics & Fintech Challenges on Wednesday 13 December, hosted by Holland FinTech, Dinalog and Rabobank.
Alfons Metselaar spoke on behalf of Nabuurs, a logistics company focusing on the development of integral supply chain solutions. They use methods of warehousing and the distribution of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Nabuurs tries to bring costs down by grouping products of parties together to sharing space in transport vehicles and warehouses. Their administration is largely digital: they use digital billing, and their truckers all carry PDAs.
Nabuurs’ challenge is to reduce costs of owning and operating their fleet. They were mainly looking at two options for this. The first is alternative forms of financing than the traditional lease model. Second, they would be willing to explore ways to sharing fleet assets with other transporters on days that it is not in use.
Their first challenger was yes-man.nl. Yes-man offers a solution called Crowdlease, which allows for asset financing using crowdfunding. They offer investors the possibility to participate in the financing of assets of Yes-man’s clients. Most importantly, they do this using a long-term outlook, allowing their clients to repeatedly tap into Yes-man’s pool of investor when needed.
The second challenger was Beequip. Beequip finances equipment for SMEs to help them grow faster. They finance not only new equipment, but also used equipment. Their main asset is the expertise that they have in identifying the intrinsic value of assets, allowing for financing based not only on numbers, but on fundamentals.
Beequip and Yes-man are willing to explore a partnership, since they offer services targeting similar clients, but that are complementary. That’s what Holland FinTech aims to do: foster innovation through collaboration, not only competition.
“Nabuurs was proud to be part of the Logistics & Fintech meeting in Rotterdam. It proves once more that an open mind to new initiatives and challenges leads to enrichment of your knowledge and a better understanding of financing possibilities.” — Alfons Metselaar, Financieel Directeur, Nabuurs
“With our Crowdlease® product we believe we can offer clients such as Nabuurs a real and proven alternative to their standard options of financing their fleet. We are thankful to have had the opportunity to present the capabilities of yes-man.nl to the Holland FinTech audience and the logistics industry on this very well-organized event!”— Dieter Lens, yes-man.nl