The German Ruhr Group plans to offer its customers new financing models. The automotive body and plant builder Thyssen-Krupp Automotive Body Solutions wants to give its customers better access to usage-based financing models for new equipment. To this end, the company is taking a minority stake in fintech start-up Cap-on (website), whose investors include Sueddeutsche Leasing (SDL).
“We see companies all over the world thinking about how to make their production networks more resilient,” said Falk Nuessle, CEO at Thyssen-Krupp Automotive Body Solutions. He added that “with Cap-on, we want to work on lowering the risk for investment projects – by making financing more flexible”
In doing so, the German group plans to apply and offer such financing models. In the long term, Nuessle said, the company plans to expand its plant engineering business model to include so-called pay-per-use (PPU) solutions. Companies do not have to purchase a plant but only pay for its use. The concept goes by the term “Equipment as a Service.”
For manufacturing companies, this has the advantage that they can expand their capacities without having to invest heavily. This is because the costs for new production equipment are only incurred during ongoing operation, depending on the number of units produced or the operating hours. Exactly how this is billed can be agreed upon individually, explains Cap-on Managing Director Philipp Lenz: “We have developed a software solution that can evaluate and take into account a wide range of parameters to optimize the distribution of risk.”