Boral, the largest construction materials company in Australia, signed up for the deployment of Earlytrade’s early settlements technology to more than 5,000 suppliers and subcontractors nationwide.
The five-year agreement will see Earlytrade digitise Boral’s progress claim and payment processes to ensure the building materials powerhouse, its customers, and suppliers are better equipped to fight inflation and navigate the incoming infrastructure boom.
For Earlytrade, this deal accelerates the contech-fintech’s mission to digitise supply chains and create a stronger, more productive, and sustainable national economy.
Earlytrade CEO and co-founder Guy Saxelby said builders and their subcontractors faced a $52-billion pipeline of work at precisely the moment materials and labour were in short supply and cost were rising.
“In an ultra-competitive market, this partnership will deliver competitive advantages to Boral, their customers and their subcontractors,” Saxelby said.
He added that with Boral being “the most significant supplier” in the Australian construction and infrastructure industry, bringing them into the Earlytrade ecosystem will reap a productivity dividend for the entire sector.
Earlytrade’s deal with Boral is the single-largest expansion of the former’s network since its inception in 2017. Its early settlements system will effectively be activated on every major infrastructure project across the country and in every state and territory.
Existing and future Earlytrade partners who have procurement arrangements with Boral will benefit from compounded productivity and resilience in their projects, as working capital is freed-up and cash conversion cycles are shortened in multiple tiers of their supply chains.
Boral expects to gain greater working capital flexibility to manage the inflationary environment and navigate supply chain bottlenecks. Offering on-demand and early payments through Earlytrade, will garner Boral loyalty among suppliers and subcontractors, attracting and retaining the best trades across projects.
Earlytrade’s early and on-demand payments will provide protection for Boral’s supply chain against insolvency trends in the industry and ensure continuity of supply.
Early and on-demand payments will support delivery of Boral’s Scope 3 net zero commitments, by more efficiently distributing liquidity to key suppliers who may be focused on bringing emissions reduction technology to market.
