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// HIGHBANKISSUE 13 · ON THE BOOK

Tasman Crest Foods Ltd

FOOD EXPORT · SOUTHEAST AND NORTH ASIA

A 14-year-old exporter of premium New Zealand pantry goods — mānuka honey, sauces, snack bars — selling through distributors across Southeast and North Asia. Founder-MD. Annual revenue US$29m, 78% of it export, most of it moving under letters of credit since the company's first container. Nine years with the bank, conduct clean, not one discrepant document presented in four years.

COMPOSITE TEACHING CASE

Tasman Crest Foods Ltd is a fictional construction. The figures, relationships and decisions on this page are illustrative — built for teaching, not drawn from any real borrower or transaction.

// WHAT WAS ASKED

THE REQUEST
Existing
US$2.5m trade finance
Requested
US$4.5m receivables-based
Trigger
Largest customer moving from letters of credit to open account, 60 days
ON THE FILE
Revenue
US$29m, up 18% in two years
LC-backed share
62%, 27% if migrated
Top customer
35% of revenue, a Singapore master distributor
Export DSO
51 days, pro-forma ~74
Trade finance cost
US$0.36m

// WHAT THE BANK DID

Agreed to the migration and changed who it underwrote: a buyer sub-limit off a real file on the Singapore distributor, trade credit insurance over the open-account book, and the facility rebuilt as a receivables base in which only insured open-account paper is eligible — with letters of credit kept for new buyers and new markets.

The reasoning is in the file itself — the four options that were on the table, how readers answered, and the senior banker's read of the same numbers.

Open issue 13

Nothing further is recorded here about Tasman Crest Foods. This record holds published files only — when the business next appears in an issue, its entry grows.

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