The funding was provided through a mixture of invoice finance (£7m), trade finance (£1.5m) and FX facilities (£150,000).

BFS also provided £700,000 of invoice finance funding to SBZ’s United States-based sister company via its operations in the US.

The Essex-based family business was established in 2003 and is owned by chief executive Laurence Holder.

The firm is a supplier and distributor of fuel additives, lubricant additives, base oils, marker dyes and specialist products designed to meet the needs of international oil groups.

Following the business’s recent growth, SBZ has invested heavily in its business this year and will be opening a new purpose-built blending plant in January 2018 to help the business grow even more.

Laurence said: “We’ve seen significant growth in recent years as a result of increasing demand for our products.

“With a new facility opening soon, we needed additional buying power in order to purchase the supplies we require to serve our customers.

“Bibby Financial Services was able to provide us with the funding we needed in a short space of time.

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“BFS bought into our vision for the future of the company and worked closely alongside us to structure a deal that met our needs.”

Paul Fraser, regional head of corporate in central and southern England at BFS (pictured above), said: “This is a great example of how we can work with businesses to structure deals that not only support their short-term goals, but their long-term ambitions too.

“SBZ was initially only looking for additional buying power, but by discussing the business’s needs and developing a keen understanding of its ambitions, we were able to put together a suite of products to help it realise its growth.

“As well as the funding in the UK, we were able to work with our operation in the US to provide an additional funding line in this market where they were previously struggling to secure [finance] due to it predominantly being a UK business.

“SBZ is a great example of how we can work across our international business to provide funding in multiple markets to help the whole operation of an international business.

“SBZ is a successful business with ambitious plans for the future and we’re excited to be working alongside it to support its growth.”