Last month, we talked about how Yara Corbitt and Isaac Heredia from Texas Cordia found the perfect asphalt plant and property. In this month’s blog, we talk about how they established financing for their first asphalt plant.
Yara Corbitt still remembers going into Rio Bank–a local community bank–back in 2011 when she and Isaac Heredia were first starting Texas Cordia.
“Our local bank has been with us since the conception of Texas Cordia and they’ve learned our style,” she said. “They’ve always had confidence in us, even when others didn’t. They know where we started from and they accepted our promise that we wouldn’t fail. Our word has carried us a long way.”
They’d actually mentioned their plans to their commercial banker at the end of 2017, Heredia said, “so this wasn’t a total surprise.”
Corbitt and Heredia had to start answering tough questions about their potential plant: Where will you put the plant? How many acres is the property? Would it be appraised at that value? What environmental permits will you need? How much would a new plant cost? What parts and pieces were included? How much would a used plant cost to buy and to repair and update? How much mix will you use for yourself? What would production cost?
“They already had our financial information because they knew our history and had watched us grow,” Corbitt said. “But, everything else needed to be covered in great detail.”
“One concern of theirs was a lot of their customers are farmers, so they were curious if our plant would have any impact on the farming community,” Corbitt said. “When they realized our plant wouldn’t have any effect on the farming community, they were on board.”
According to Corbitt, the loan application process was piecemeal. Rather than checking things off a long list, she and Heredia took it one step at a time, pulling together financials, audits and projects over the course of two weeks.
In order to process the loan application, the pair had to find a plant and a property–something they worked on alongside the loan application, which we outlined in last week’s blog. They also had to make themselves aware of the upgrades their plant would require, and what they might cost.
By the end of February, they’d submitted the loan application and were approved by mid-March. Within the next two weeks, they closed on the property and the plant they’d been eyeing.
“We didn’t have time to waste and our commercial banker, Darrell Williams, made it happen for us,” Corbitt said. “He’s done a good job in keeping up with us. We push forward, and he does, too.”
“Part of it feels like it’s taking forever,” Corbitt said. “I have to remind myself how quickly it really is moving.”
Stay tuned for the next chapter of Texas Cordia’s process of establishing their first asphalt plant, where we dig into the plant permitting process.