General discounting facilities add new finance dimension

RAY SMUTS
SPECIALISING in that which it has come to know best, Cape-based Anglo African Trading’s product portfolio remains focused on minimising potential client exchange and interest rate risks in the volatile environment of cross-border trading.
Based at Stellenbosch for the past five years, many of the trade finance company’s financial products have been developed specifically to suit industries in the region. “We take pride in our ability to adapt to the demands of the marketplace,” says Dr Hendrik de Waal, the company’s head of treasury.
The company’s services include import and export trade finance, logistic finance and general discounting facilities. It is an active player in the wine, fruit, perishables and agricultural commodity markets.
“We offer many of the standard trade finance instruments but some of our products such as general discounting facilities and import trade finance are quite unique, developed with the knowledge and understanding of the import and export industry,” says De Waal. All our products
either include or can be combined with hedging instruments.”
He points out that commodities like
wine are exported on a fixed price basis
and that conventional trade finance solutions
can be applied to such products.
Fruit and similar industries, fish for instance, work on a consignment principle where prices are determined when the product reaches the overseas market, creating a problem from a conventional trade finance point of view.
Anglo African Trading has developed and successfully implemented new and dynamic financing products tailor-made for these industries, says De Waal.
“Some of these, like our general discounting facilities, have not only supplied a financing solution for the fruit industry but given a new dimension to the portfolio available to our clients,” says De Waal.