Twisted Healthy Treats
Twisted Healthy Treats (registered trade mark of Spreadies Pty Ltd) is a Sydney-based wholesale trade business that manufactures better-for-you frozen dessert products.
Need
To continue delivering its product to the US during a significant scale-up period, Twisted Healthy Treats needed finance to support stretched cash flow cycles.
Solution
Our Small Business Export Loan provided the cash flow that Twisted Healthy Treats needed to continue its operations, send containers to the US and prepare for domestic production.
Twisted Healthy Treats manufactures better-for-you frozen dessert products that are sold into the major supermarkets in Australia.
The business has a large presence in school canteens and has been scaling up through exporting large volumes of its frozen yoghurt product into the US, specifically to Costco and a small number of independent businesses.
I can't recommend Export Finance Australia enough. Export Finance Australia was incredible providing the cash flow that we needed to support the business. It was a real lifeline for me.
Cassandra Spies
Co-Founder and Managing Director, Twisted Healthy Treats
Beginning its exporting journey in 2020, the process worked very smoothly Cassandra Spies, Co-founder and Managing Director at Twisted Healthy Treats highlighted. However, global logistics challenges meant that the working capital cycle began to stretch.
“After the first lockdown in 2020, our school canteen business, which is a really important part of the business in terms of cash flow, went to zero overnight,” Cassandra explained. “And right at that time, we landed the Costco US deal, which meant my team could continue to work.”
“Products shipped and arrived on time, so it was kind of a self-funding project. What happened in 2021 is that we were sending containers and we weren't getting paid for up to four months later than what we had expected.”
After seeing a case study about how we were able to support ModelCo, Cassandra reached out to our team to see what solutions were available.
Finance to support an extended logistics timeline
The agreement with Twisted Healthy Treats’ client meant that payments were structured around the delivery and arrival of products in the US warehouse.
“Because of the hugely protracted logistics issues that we had in the US in 2021, the time the containers left Sydney to the time we got paid was probably 10 weeks, in the worst case, this was about 30 or 40 weeks.”
We provided a Small Business Export Loan to Spreadies Pty Ltd, which supported the business with its cash flow while waiting for its containers to arrive in the US, this then enabled the team to continue operations and start work on domestic production.
“It was approved in like 10 days – it was so easy,” Cassandra said.
“Having the team at Export Finance Australia step in when they did was a real lifeline, and it was a very easy process. The team was incredible, very supportive and very responsive because they knew that it was a time-sensitive requirement that I had.”
“It's super exciting to be sharing our delicious products with the world and I'm very proud that our product is having real success in the US.”
“We've shown that the product resonates with US consumers, now we just need to work out how to reach consumers through other channels, and I’d love to continue to work with Export Finance Australia because they were an incredible support for the business.”
