13 November 2024
Polymetrix – a user of AKA's SmaTiX Portal
As part of the SME Specialist Meeting 2024 of the Berner Union in Zurich, we met our valued exporter Polymetrix – a Swiss company specialised in the development and manufacture of innovative thermal process technologies. The company offers customised system solutions for the processing and recycling of plastics, particularly for the PET industry. With its extensive expertise and many years of experience, Polymetrix supports customers worldwide in realizing resource-efficient and sustainable production plants and thus making an important contribution to the circular economy and environmental protection.
We talked to Jacqueline Sun, Chief Financial Officer of Polymetrix, about her experiences with SmaTiX and asked her three questions.
What is Polymetrix' main activity, what are your main markets and why is it so important for you to offer long-term ECA-covered buyer credits to your clients?
Polymetrix AG (PMX) as an EPCm (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction management) company, focuses on delivering comprehensive solution oriented projects particularly for PET. Our main product portfolio includes processes for virgin PET (vPET), recycled PET (rPET) and other polycondensates.
Over the last 5 to 10 years, the development of regulations for recycling PET bottle packaging material has been accelerating globally in response to growing environmental concerns and the need for a circular economy. Besides more and more government directives on this topic and also some of major brandowners corporations like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have set voluntary targets to increase rPET in their packaging, so the demand for rPET is surging.
The vPET production has a more capital intensive nature due to the economies of scale and vertical integration. The customers are relatively big players and do not ask for export insurance financing. On the other hand, recycled PET production requires rather lower investments, and the investors have lack of funding instruments in their own country. Therefore ECA-covered buyer credits are much easier and a quicker solution for our customers.
How did you learn about AKA and their Small-Ticket-Platform SmaTiX?
When we encountered challenges with traditional banks declining to finance small-ticket transactions below 5 million Euro, we reached out to SERV (Swiss ECA) for potential solutions. SERV recommended AKA due to their specialized solution for buyer credits in the 1 - 15 million Euro range.
Which benefits do you get from using SmaTiX?
In many countries, SmaTiX enables us to quickly obtain an initial financing indication, including SERV premium calculations, financing costs (such as interest and administrative fees), and automatically generated documents for customers, like letters of intent.
The platform is highly convenient and user-friendly, serving as a one-stop solution that provides customers with a clear overview of costs, next steps, and requirements. Additionally, the platform significantly reduces response times, which is extremely beneficial for our operations.