ThinCats helps fund Scottish marine training facility

ThinCats, the Ashby-based alternative lending firm, have joined forces with Edinburgh-based finance experts, Alderburn Finance, and specialist marine training and consultancy providers, Stream Marine Training (SMT), to provide them with funds to bring a unique offering to Scotland.

The first of its kind outside of the South of England, SMT is based at Glasgow International Airport.

The funding has helped SMT cut both time and overall costs whilst also allowing them to offer consultancy services to the global maritime, oil and gas, renewables and construction sectors.

The 18,000 sq ft facility now includes a helicopter shell and life boat, ten new classrooms, a technical training suite, a mock helicopter pad for fire training, suite of offices and a canteen.

Damon Walford, chief development officer, said: “It was a delight to be able to help SMT finance their ambitious plans for growth. Due to the nature of marine training, finding the perfect facility can be tricky especially when it comes to looking at the cost implications of such a large-scale facility. Initially business funding was largely provided through equity and mezzanine debt but when that was no longer able to help them grow further, alternative lending was the perfect solution for them. I am confident that it won’t be long before they have plans for even further expansion.”

Martin White, chief executive at SMT, said: “At SMT, we were in a position to grow very rapidly, and provide services that are desperately needed by a range of industry sectors. However, we needed the right funding to enable us to take advantage of the opportunities. Alderburn and ThinCats fulfilled that role extremely well and now we can focus on cementing ourselves as one of the centres of training in Europe. Many thanks to the ThinCats team for their help in taking SMT to the next level and we look forward to a very bright future for SMT.”

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