Funding an egg production business from scratch

When Diane Scott wanted an extra revenue stream to complement her husband’s dairy business, she needed a lender who would take the time to understand how her new egg production venture would work.

Rather than going to a bank which might just rely on AI algorithms, Diane was keen to find a lending organisation who, she explains, “could see what I was trying to do and how I was trying to do it”.

Her accountant recommended Rural Asset Finance – a company specialising in supporting farm businesses, who know the day-to-day challenges because their staff have either run farms themselves or come from farming families. “They immediately understood what I was talking about and what I wanted to achieve,” Diane says.

The team used their decades of first-hand farming experience to run an in-depth analysis of Diane’s egg production business case, her financial forecasts and the project’s stakeholders before coming up with a three-fold solution to give her the funding she needed to launch her company Littlemount Eggs Ltd in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

Quick approval

“First we consolidated and increased the couple’s historic farm mortgage,” explains Rural Asset Finance CEO Matthew Smart, “to give them a new, more affordable long-term loan which funded the build of the new chicken house and its associated infrastructure.

“Then we provided a multi-asset hire-purchase agreement, combined with a DAERA grant, to finance a state-of-the-art, 135m, multi-layer poultry shed that housed the birds to the highest free-range standards.

“Further equipment leasing facilities then added a solar array to the chicken shed roof, a back-up generator and an automatic egg packer and stacker.”

And because Rural Asset Finance has its own in-house legal and compliance teams, the company was able to process and approve Diane’s application quickly. It all meant she was soon able to welcome her flock of Lohmann chickens.

“We were approved quickly and the money came through soon after that,” she says. “Rural Asset Finance were really professional and efficient. Their communication was outstanding throughout, keeping us in the picture every step of the way. “But it’s more than that – it’s their personal, customer service,” adds Diane.

“They have been so supportive and so interested in what we’re doing – and they still are. The types of questions they ask and the conversations we have with them show that they properly understand farmers.”

Now, Littlemount is providing 24,000 eggs per day to retailers, hotels and other customers across Northern Ireland.

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