At River Capital, I spend my time working with SMEs across the North West through the North West Business Growth Loan Fund, providing loans between £100,000 and £500,000, with the flexibility to go further where the opportunity justifies it. What strikes me time and again is how differently growth capital gets used from one business to the next and how much it matters that the funding fits the plan, rather than the other way round.

Growth isn’t always about scaling up

There’s a tendency to think of growth capital purely in terms of expansion — new premises, new headcount, new markets. Sometimes that’s exactly how it works. However, growth capital just as often shows up at a turning point: a founder stepping back, a management team stepping up, or a business proving out a new model that needs working capital to keep pace with demand.

Take Powerhub Solutions, a Stockport-based energy optimisation business. Their growth loan wasn’t about a single big bet. It was about giving a fast-growing company, already moving from £1.5m to £5m-plus in revenue, the resources and recruitment firepower to keep up with its own trajectory. We also structured a further tranche, approved in principle against agreed milestones, so the funding could scale in step with performance rather than getting ahead of it.

Play Away Children’s Playcentre in Aintree tells a different story again. There, growth capital supported a succession and a retirement sale, with a new trio of directors taking on a well-established local business and a clear plan to invest in the venue, protect the existing team, and create new jobs. No expansion into new territory, no headline-grabbing scale-up, just funding doing exactly what a community business needed at exactly the right moment.

What we look for

Across every deal, there are a few things we look for. We want to see a credible plan and a management team capable of delivering it. We want to understand the regional impact and the jobs protected or created, investment in people, genuine social and economic value for the North West and we want businesses that see our funding as a partnership, not just a transaction.

That last point matters more than people sometimes expect. The best outcomes come from staying close to a business after the loan completes understanding how things are progressing, being a sounding board, and being ready to help with further support if the growth story keeps developing, whether that’s with us or with someone else.

Debt funding as a lever, not a last resort

There’s still a perception in some quarters that debt funding is what businesses turn to when equity isn’t available, or as a stopgap. I’d challenge that. Used well, this type of funding is a deliberate choice. It lets founders and management teams fund their next stage without giving up equity, keeps control in the hands of the people who built the business, and can be structured flexibly around cashflow and milestones rather than a rigid repayment schedule.

That flexibility is exactly why it works across such different situations — a scale-up like Powerhub, a succession like Play Away, or the acquisitions, working capital needs, and expansion plans we see from SMEs across Manchester, Liverpool, Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria every month.

The North West opportunity

The North West has no shortage of ambitious, well-run businesses and often what they need is a funding partner who understands the region and can move at the pace the opportunity demands. That’s the role the North West Business Growth Loan Fund plays, and it’s the conversation I’d encourage any growth-minded business owner in the region to start having.

If you’re thinking about your next stage of growth, whatever that looks like for your business I’d welcome the conversation.

Chris Carter – Investment Manager, North West Business Growth Loan Fund

ENDS