Oxbury Bank secures £25m funding line from British Business Investments

Agricultural bank Oxbury has secured a £25m credit facility from British Business Investments, which it says will help it lend an additional £250m to rural SMEs.

The funding, which comes from the commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, follows Oxbury’s £20m equity raise in July.

Tim Coates, co-founder and chief customer officer at Oxbury, said the new funding line would “help accelerate Oxbury’s support for the rural economy and help farmers and food producers address the twin challenges of food security and the transition to low-carbon nature-friendly production.”

“Oxbury’s relationship-led approach, enabled by our proprietary Oxbury Earth Agtech banking platform, is essential in serving the needs of the small and medium businesses that are the lifeblood of this crucial part of the British economy.”

In total, the bank has now raised £93m in debt and equity from investors including Frontier Agriculture, Hutchinsons Group and Hambro Perks.

To date, Oxbury says it has £650m worth of completed or in progress lending, and is well on its way towards lending £1bn by the end of 2024.

Today the bank reiterated its forecast to break even by the end of 2022.