The Challenge
A long established and steadily growing global beverage company owns and operates many facilities in the U.S. and across North America. The company appreciated the value of leasing and had been working with a lessor for its material handling equipment to maximize its budget for the mechanical equipment used in its production, distribution, and plant facilities. Although leasing was clearly the right strategy for the expanding business, the incumbent provider demanded certain terms that presented a rather significant challenge. The issue at hand was the fact that the lessor required each lease to meet a minimum threshold of $100,000.
To comply with this requirement, the company often had to bundle the separate needs of multiple facilities so that the lease value was at or above the minimum. This resulted in a complex co-mingling of equipment that was time consuming and difficult to manage accurately. The company has several brands, each with their own facilities in various locations across North America. Because they are run independently, they typically do not need to work with each other. Combining leases across these disparate facilities required a significant amount of extra coordination, movement of certain equipment to proper locations, and additional administrative work. As such, the company was looking for a new solution that would allow it to secure equipment leases for each facility without restrictions or minimum thresholds.
The Solution
The beverage company met with Harbor Capital Leasing and learned about its flexible leasing solution that would eliminate this challenge entirely. In addition, Harbor Capital could help it reduce overall costs, save valuable time, and improve productivity.
Harbor Capital worked with the team to demonstrate its ability to provide lease schedules for each separate facility without requiring minimums. Harbor Capital provides unique schedules for each piece of equipment to match with each group in a facility. By tying schedules to specific POs for each group, it becomes easy for plant managers to get what they need without having to coordinate with other unrelated groups or facilities.
Additionally, because Harbor Capital manages the entire lifecycle of leased material handling equipment, it could provide the company additional benefits including a simpler and more cost effective equipment return process. For example, Harbor Capital reduced the return freight cost for this beverage company, by capping return mileage.
The beverage company selected Harbor Capital Leasing for its flexible, cost effective, and complete leasing solutions. To start, ten of the company’s North American facilities would be eligible to work with Harbor Capital for their individual needs. The Harbor Capital material handling leasing solutions include equipment such as forklifts, genie lifts, scrubber sweeper, yard jockeys, and more.
The Results
Today, this giant in the beverage production world is leveraging Harbor Capital’s world-class leasing services for multiple facilities. With dozens of separate lease schedules tied directly to the appropriate facilities, the company is able to maximize efficiency and productivity.
Not only does Harbor Capital help the beverage company better manage its operations, it provides an overall cost savings with fewer fees and lower pricing. By eliminating the need to co-mingle or coordinate material handling leasing schedules with other facilities that may be located across the country, the company can now focus on its goals and priorities.
“Harbor always places our customers’ needs at the forefront. We are flexible and help solve challenges where others can’t. In this case, we solved a significant issue that unlocked their ability to be far more nimble, efficient, and productive. We are proud to help support this respected and growing corporation,” said Kevin Perkins, Senior Account Executive, Harbor Capital Leasing.
Harbor Capital Leasing is providing the beverage company with significant value that contributes to its overall success. Key features and benefits include:
- Flexible leasing structure with no minimum thresholds
- End of life equipment support including capped freight charges
- Leading asset management tool to easily and effectively manage entire portfolio
- Utilization studies/price protection analysis
- Minority/woman owned business partner
“At Harbor we work hard to get to know our customers and we listen closely to their unique needs. We understand that having one master schedule may sound logical from a corporate standpoint, but at a plant level it can cause serious challenges, disruption, and delay. By providing the right support at the right level, this company is saving money and freed up from spending a lot of time managing the very complex process at the beginning and end of each lease,” continued Perkins. “Capital must be spent wisely, and we want all businesses to know that material handling leasing is not one size fits all. Review your current provider and compare them to other options. You may be surprised to learn how much more value you can gain through the right leasing partner.”
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