Leading pharmaceutical wholesaler agrees £8m funding with Bibby Financial Services
Bibby Financial Services has provided an £8m asset-based lending facility to Veenak International Limited, one of the UK’s leading wholesalers of pharmaceutical and healthcare products.
Established over twenty years ago, the company is at the forefront of pharmaceutical export, import and wholesale activity, and has an established and expanding client base in the UK and Europe.
The business, based in Birmingham, provides a wide variety of medicines, medical devices and disposables such as bandages, dressing and syringes. Its products can be found in pharmacies and healthcare practices across the UK and Europe, including Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Ireland.
Veenak’s expertise in negotiating import and export regulations efficiently, providing its customers with the medical products they need quickly, has driven demand for its products over the years. Veenak has ambitious plans for the future and is aiming to increase revenues from £28m in 2017 to over £35m by 2019. To facilitate this growth, Veenak required additional working capital to serve an ever-increasing number of customers.
The business spoke with BFS’s corporate team, which was able to structure a bespoke funding package for the business in a short timescale. The new facility provides Veenak with the flexibility to quickly access cash as and when it needs to, allowing it to serve more customers and invest in the future growth of the business.
Shan Hassam, group managing director at Veenak International Limited, said:
“We strongly believe that sourcing the medicines and supplies needed by the healthcare sector should be a streamlined and hassle-free process. To achieve this, our business must operate at maximum efficiency and our ability to access cash quickly is an integral part of that.
“The facility from BFS provides us with working capital that we can rely on when we need to. The BFS corporate team demonstrated an in-depth understanding of our business and its needs and built a facility around that. With this new facility in place, we can focus our efforts on working to expand our customer base and growing the business.”
Chris Sygrove, corporate manager at Bibby Financial Services, said:
“Veenak is built around efficiency and its success and growth to date hinges on its ability to provide medical supplies and pharmaceuticals in a timely fashion. It is an ambitious business managed by a first-class team and we’re excited to work alongside the company, providing the funding it needs to grow.
“We’re a relationship based funder, and this means that we get to know our clients’ businesses so we can tailor a funding package suited to their specific needs. We look forward to helping the business realise its growth ambitions in the future.”
Ben Smith, UK corporate sales director, said:
“This exciting new deal is a great example of our ability to work to our clients’ timeframes and provide flexible funding that suits their needs. In recent years, we have made significant additions to our asset-based lending capability which now includes stock finance, foreign exchange and asset finance.
“As a result, we are able to offer a greater range of financing options to our clients, providing them with the working capital they need to expand in both domestic and international markets. The BFS corporate team has structured more than 600 deals across the UK since 2013, and we look forward to supporting even more businesses over the coming years.”