How a piling contractor secured £1.2m of working capital in six weeks

Industry: Construction (piling)
Location: Greater Manchester, England

Problem:
A £14.8m-turnover piling contractor needed significant working capital in a sector banks are most reluctant to fund

Solution:
Swoop stacked three facilities totalling £1.2m across three lenders in around six weeks

Results: £1.2m arranged | funded in ~6 weeks | supplier line still live a year on

Challenge

A piling contractor in Greater Manchester, turning over £14.8m, had a growth problem most businesses would envy and most banks would run from.

Piling is capital-hungry work. You mobilise rigs, crews and materials onto a site and carry the cost of the job for weeks or months before the money comes back. Scale that across several sites at once, and the working-capital requirement is large, lumpy and constant. The business was winning work; it needed the cash to deliver it.

The trouble is that construction is the sector high-street banks like least. Long payment terms, project risk and a history of sector insolvencies mean a contractor can be profitable and growing and still get a slow no from its bank. A single lender was also unlikely to want the whole exposure on its own.

On top of that, the need was urgent. Working capital that arrives after the site has mobilised is working capital that arrives too late. The contractor did not just need £1.2m; it needed it structured quickly and split across lenders who would each take a slice they were comfortable with. That is a hard thing to arrange alone, which is why their accountant brought it to Swoop.

Solution

Rather than hunt for one lender to swallow the whole £1.2m, Swoop built the funding as three facilities across three different lenders, matched to how the money would actually be used.

The stack was £450k of supplier finance with Lenkie to pay suppliers and keep sites moving, a £500k unsecured term loan with Funding Circle for broader working capital, and a further £250k facility with Lending Crowd. Each lender took a portion sized to its own appetite, which is what made a £1.2m raise possible in a sector where one lender rarely wants the full exposure.

Splitting the raise this way did two things. It got the deal funded at all, because whole-of-market access meant the contractor was not limited to a single bank’s view of construction risk. And it matched each pound of funding to its job: revolving supplier finance for the ongoing site costs, a term loan for the larger working-capital base.

The whole thing moved fast. The client signed up on 2 June and had all three facilities closed by mid-July, roughly six weeks from start to funded. In a sector where the alternative is often a slow decline from a single bank, speed was not a nice-to-have. It was the difference between delivering the pipeline of work and turning it away.

Result

The headline is simple: £1.2m of working capital, three facilities, around six weeks from sign-up to funded.

The immediate effect was operational. With supplier finance in place, the contractor could pay suppliers and keep multiple sites mobilised without draining its own cash. The term loan gave it a broader working-capital base to take on more work with confidence rather than caution. The funding matched the pace of the business.

The knock-on effect shows in what happened next. The £450k supplier-finance line was still drawing monthly a year later, which tells you it became part of how the business runs rather than a one-time top-up. Funding that fits the work tends to stick.

For the accountant, this is the credibility case. A £14.8m contractor is not a small client, and construction is not an easy sector to fund. Being the person who brought a fast, well-structured £1.2m solution to the table is the kind of moment that changes how a client sees their accountant, from compliance provider to the person who helps them grow.

Looking at a similar move? See how supplier finance works.

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