The Cash Sitting in Your Yard
Ask an SME owner where the business's money is and they will point at the bank balance, the debtor book, maybe the stock. There is usually another pile they forget to count: the equipment, vehicles and machinery the business owns outright. Paid for in better years, working every day, and holding tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds of value that the business treats as unspendable simply because it is bolted down.
It is not unspendable. Asset refinance exists for exactly this: a lender advances cash secured against equipment the business already owns, the business repays over an agreed term, and the equipment never stops working. No sale, no disruption, no change in what the machines do all day. The value that was locked in metal becomes liquidity in the account, at rates far closer to asset finance than to any unsecured alternative, because the lending is secured on something real.
When does this make sense? The honest answer is: in specific situations, not as a habit. The good uses share a shape, a defined need or opportunity where cash now creates value worth more than the financing costs:
* Working capital through a growth phase, when rising orders mean more stock, more wages and longer debtor books before the revenue lands * A time-limited opportunity, a competitor's customer list, a discounted stock purchase, premises coming available, that will not wait for organic cash build * Consolidating expensive borrowing, clearing an overdraft or merchant advances onto cheaper, fixed, term-matched footing * Smoothing a known lump, a tax bill, a fit-out, without hollowing out reserves
The poor uses share a shape too: refinancing assets to fund ongoing losses, or to paper over a pricing problem, or repeatedly, as a substitute for profitability. Releasing equity from the yard buys time and capacity; it does not fix a business model, and a lender worth dealing with will say so rather than simply write the agreement.
Mechanically, the process is more straightforward than most owners expect. The lender values the equipment, unencumbered kit with a decent resale market values best: machinery, commercial vehicles, plant, agrees an advance against it, and sets a term suited to the asset's remaining life. Decisions typically come quickly, because the security is tangible and easy to assess. The business keeps full use throughout; the only practical change is a monthly payment and a charge registered against the asset until the term ends.
There is a planning use as well as a rescue use, and it is underrated. Businesses heading into a known heavy period, an expansion, a large contract mobilisation, a seasonal trough, can arrange refinance ahead of need, deliberately, on calm timelines and good terms, rather than reactively when the pressure has already arrived. Money raised before it is needed is always cheaper and better structured than money raised in a hurry. The yard full of owned kit is, in effect, a credit line the business has never opened.
A worthwhile exercise for any owner: list what the business owns outright, vehicles, machines, equipment, and put honest second-hand values against each. Most are surprised by the total. That figure is not just insurance-schedule trivia. It is the size of the option the business is sitting on.
Buckingham Leasing arranges refinance on machinery, vehicles and equipment for SMEs, and we will tell you plainly what your assets could raise and whether your situation is one of the good uses. If the business needs cash and the yard is full of paid-for metal, the answer may already be parked outside.
