Factory and manufacturing property loans

Ardent Capital Group brings the same method to every client: execution and strategy, clear advice for smart lending, and long-term growth. That means the right lender, structure and timing, straight advice so you borrow with confidence, and today's deal built toward where you want to be tomorrow. We are specialists in helping business owners secure finance to purchase their own property, and we understand the complex structures that often sit around it, including multiple trusts, holding companies and self-managed super funds. Once you settle, the building has to earn as production runs through it, so we match you with lenders who understand owner-occupied industrial sites and the way plant and production feed into a valuation. As the operation grows into more space or more equipment, we stay alongside you. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

No, and it works in your favour. A factory is standard commercial security, in the same bucket as a warehouse, a shop or an office, and it is valued on comparable sales and the rent the premises could command. That is quite different from a pub, a motel or a caravan park, where the lending gears lower because the asset is specialised. What a factory does carry, and a warehouse generally does not, is serious plant. That is a separate question from the building, it is funded on its own facility, and it is where the real work of a factory purchase sits.

Yes, and it is well worth knowing before you buy. Industrial plant and machinery is not serial-numbered property on the Personal Property Securities Register. The register says so directly: goods like jack hammers, pumps, computers and coffee machines are not serial-numbered, and to find a security interest over them you have to search by the grantor’s details. So a financier’s interest in a press, a lathe or a CNC cell cannot be found by searching for the machine. It is found by searching the vendor. We run a PPSR search against the vendor’s ACN and ABN before you settle, we read what comes back, and we make sure anything financed is either paid out at settlement or taken out of the price you agree.

Not on its own, and the reason is straightforward once you see it. The ordinary course of business exception is about the seller’s ordinary trade, and a manufacturer’s ordinary trade is selling what it makes, not the machines it makes it with. You would expect clear title buying a television from a television retailer. Buying that retailer’s office furnishings is a different proposition. So the plant in a factory purchase is checked rather than assumed. It is a straightforward search, it costs a few dollars, and we make sure it happens. The asymmetry is what makes the advice easy: the search is trivial, and the asset is not.

The party who holds the registered interest can take the plant, and the buyer who paid for it wears the loss. The best known illustration in this area is the Forge matter, where turbines were held to be chattels rather than fixtures, an unregistered security interest went with them, and the loss ran to tens of millions. The lesson is not that plant is dangerous. It is that a search costing a few dollars stands between you and an asset worth a great deal more. Your solicitor advises you on the contract and on how the plant is dealt with in it. We make sure the search is run and that the finance is built around what it finds.

It decides what your mortgage actually captures. Fixtures are treated as part of the real property, so plant bolted into the slab and wired into the building generally reads as part of the lender’s security. Chattels are not, and they are not normally included in a mortgage valuation of real property, so plant that can be unbolted and trucked away sits outside it. That single line is why the property and the plant are funded on two facilities rather than one. It is also why the same machine can be argued either way depending on how it is fixed, and why we get the position settled before lodgement rather than at valuation.

A factory or shed typically gears to around 80% as standard industrial security. Add residential or other business security and a cross-collateralised structure can reach up to 100% of the purchase price, subject to serviceability. Your exact number depends on your file, so talk to us.

Separately from the property, and that is deliberate. Presses, lathes, CNC machines, gantry cranes, compressors and production lines are funded by chattel mortgage or equipment finance, on their own facility, over a term that matches the working life of the machine rather than the life of a building. A valuer prices the building and the plant that forms part of it, not the machinery that can be unbolted and taken away. Splitting them keeps the property facility clean, usually improves the rate on it, and gets the whole factory funded rather than half of it. Forklifts, trucks and delivery vehicles are funded the same way.

Four things do most of the work and they are all easy to establish early. The power supply, because three-phase is the baseline and a dedicated high-voltage supply, substation or transformer decides whether you can run a furnace or a full line without an upgrade that takes months. The floor loading, because it decides what plant the slab will carry. The clear span height and column spacing, because they set your production layout. And the crane rails and gantries, because they are part of the building and they carry real value to the next manufacturer. None of these are obstacles. They are simply cheaper to know at the offer stage than at settlement.

Yes, and it is the most common factory purchase we do. You already know what the floor produces, the lender can see a proven operator in the premises, and the rent you stop paying to your landlord is added back when a lender tests whether you can service the loan. The lease you are currently on is also good evidence of what the property is worth to a tenant, which helps the valuation rather than hindering it. If the plant is already yours, the purchase is cleaner again, and we say so in the submission.

It can, and it is established rather than assumed. Engineering, plating, welding and chemical handling are activities the environment regulators take an interest in, so the position is worth knowing early. In Australia the process starts with a Preliminary Site Investigation, which reviews the site history and the land around it. Only if that raises a question does it go to a Detailed Site Investigation, which samples soil and groundwater. The requirement usually reaches you through the valuer rather than a published credit policy, because a commercial mortgage valuation carries a site contamination questionnaire, and at least one lender lists contaminated land as an unacceptable security outright. We get ahead of it at the front of the deal rather than letting it surface at valuation.

For a full-doc application, most lenders want two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns for the manufacturing business, personal tax returns for all guarantors, BAS lodgements, the contract of sale, the lease if you are buying the premises you occupy, an asset register for the plant, and any environmental reports on the site. Lenders want to see that the floor is busy and the work is repeatable, so a supply agreement, a wholesale contract or a long-standing customer is worth naming in the submission because it is contracted income rather than one-off work. Plenty of manufacturers do not fit a standard full-doc assessment neatly. Alt-doc and low-doc routes exist, supported by an accountant’s declaration, BAS lodgements and business bank statements, at a slightly higher rate. We work through your income situation upfront to identify the best approach.

Yes, it is possible, and we arrange these. An industrial shed sits comfortably inside an SMSF purchase. It is also one of the more intricate purchases in commercial finance, and the detail is what decides whether it works. The fund borrows under a limited recourse borrowing arrangement, so the factory sits in a separate holding trust and the lender can only come after that one property. From 10 August 2026 a new arrangement can only be used for business real property. A factory trading wholly as a business qualifies, and it does not matter whether you or a tenant runs it. A site with a residence on the same title generally does not. Your operating company leases the factory back from the fund, in writing, at market rent supported by an independent appraisal, and the rent has to actually be paid. Cross-collateralisation is not available inside super, so the fund needs its own deposit and the 100% LVR structures described elsewhere on this page do not work here. Lenders cap SMSF lending below a standard purchase, generally between 65% and 80%, and want cash left in the fund after settlement. We know this sounds complicated. It is, and that is exactly why we do it every day. Reach out to our team and we will guide you through the entire process. We structure the finance, tell you which lenders will take a factory as SMSF security and on what terms, and bring in the SMSF specialists and licensed advisers who set the fund side up. You will not be working it out on your own. Get that right and it is a solid, compliant structure.

Often, yes. A decline usually means the factory went to a lender whose appetite did not match it, not that the factory is unfundable. The two common causes are a credit team treating a manufacturing property as a specialised trading asset when it is standard industrial security, and the plant being rolled into the property loan when it belongs on a facility of its own. Both are fixable. Non-bank and specialist lenders assess industrial property differently and several publish an LVR the majors will not commit to in writing. We will give you a straight answer on whether it is fundable elsewhere.

Going direct means one lender’s appetite and one set of criteria. In manufacturing the spread between lenders is unusually wide: the majors do not publish an owner-occupier commercial LVR at all, several non-banks publish 80% in their product guides, hardstand and vacant industrial land gear to 65% rather than 80%, and at least one lender lists contaminated land as an unacceptable security outright. A specialist broker knows which lenders are genuinely writing factories this quarter, how each one reads the plant, and how to present the file so the property and the machinery are funded properly rather than awkwardly.

Most of the time, no. We are paid a commission by the lender once your loan settles. Where a purchase requires significant preparation, a small mandate fee may apply, and we will always be upfront about this before work begins.

Although we are based in Sydney, we service clients across all major Australian cities, including Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart, along with their surrounding regional areas. Wherever your factory is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with plant and machinery finance for manufacturers and working capital for manufacturers. On asset finance, that covers presses, lathes, CNC machines, gantry cranes, compressors, materials-handling equipment, production lines, forklifts and delivery vehicles. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to carry raw material stock, to bridge the gap between production and payment, and to cover wages.

Yes. That is our core ethos, helping you understand the right strategy, structure and clear advice from the very first conversation. Our main borrower profiles are manufacturers and industrial owner-occupiers seeking finance from $100,000 upwards, and buying the factory you already trade from is very often a first commercial purchase, so it is well within our wheelhouse. We will walk you through what the shed will actually value at, how the plant is funded and checked, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.