Acton Bridge Garden Centre
A typical example of how Business Finance Solutions has helped encourage business growth is our recent application from Acton Bridge Garden Centre.
David Hodkinson, the Director and sole driving force behind Acton Bridge Garden Centre Limited had run his own successful sole trader landscaping business for several years. He had set up Acton Bridge Garden Centre in 2007 with the aims of supplying horticultural products to the retail sector, and to expand into the wholesale market by erecting ‘poly tunnels' in which to grow thousands of seedlings for sale on a weekly basis at local Horticultural Auctions. This expansion required an injection of £50,000 for planting and crop germination and was time critical.
Having already injected a substantial amount of his own funds into the business, David was in need of rapid assistance. Although he had sound business plans which included plans to create jobs for local residents through the development of a Coffee Shop and conversion of part of the Garden Centre building into a Farm Shop, and the support of his local MP Mike Hall, David's application to the Bank for essential supplementary finance had been turned down based on the results of Credit Scoring.
A BFS Manager met David and viewed the proposed development at first hand, to quickly get to grips with the detail of the proposal. This saved considerable time in the applications and approval process and within less than 10 working days Business Finance Solutions were delighted to be able to sanction the request.
David Hodkinson, Director at Acton Bridge Nursery and Shrub Centre said:
"As an independent retailer catering for the local market, we are delighted with the assistance given to us by the NWDA...Since receiving the loan we have been able to action a number of projects, building new tunnels enabling us to grow from seedlings for the wholesale plants market and also to fund our new Coffee Shop.... Things are going really well for us, despite the current economic conditions and without the funding we would certainly have not survived. We have just taken on a further full time member of staff, and it's all hands on deck."