Customer testimonial

Maison J. Quillé and Fils

Thierry Lambert - CFO

Thierry Lambert is a Fractional CFO for several companies, including Maison J. Quillé & Fils. With more than 15 years of experience growing and transforming businesses, he advises management teams on financial and corporate structuring as well as business development. At Maison J. Quillé & Fils, his role includes strengthening the company's financial position, optimising cash flow management and providing strategic financial guidance to support performance and sustainable growth.

Could you introduce your company? 

For almost 200 years, Maison J. Quillé & Fils has been a recognised leader in the wholesale coffee trade. Based in Les Pennes-Mirabeau in Provence, the company combines long-standing expertise, quality and operational excellence to serve demanding corporate customers.

As a member of the SOPEX Group, we benefit from strong organisational and logistics capabilities, enabling us to compete successfully in a demanding market while delivering reliability, responsiveness and excellence. With annual turnover exceeding €50 million and sustained business growth, we have established ourselves as a major B2B player in the food industry.

Our mission is to source, process and distribute premium-quality coffee products that meet the highest standards, serving roasters, distributors, manufacturers and foodservice operators. Like many trading businesses, our key priorities include procurement, margin management, quality control, inventory financing and efficient management of trade receivables.

Maison J. Quillé & Fils combines the strengths of a long-established family business with strong financial performance and a forward-looking vision, enabling us to build lasting partnerships based on recognised expertise.

What challenges led you to contact AU Group?

Historically, our trade receivables were financed by discounting bills of exchange with our banking partners. However, this payment method has gradually been replaced by bank transfers, which cannot be discounted. We therefore needed to implement a financing solution aligned with these new payment practices while diversifying our sources of funding.

In addition, fluctuations in global coffee prices can significantly affect our working capital requirement and the value of our receivables. Against this backdrop, finding an appropriate financing solution became essential.

How did AU Group support you, and what solution was implemented?

Our initial meeting allowed us to present our objectives, constraints and financing requirements. Following AU Group's assessment, it quickly became clear that factoring was the most suitable solution.

AU Group provided a comprehensive overview of the factoring market, introducing the different providers, their respective strengths and the full range of available solutions—from traditional full-service factoring to balance-sheet financing, off-balance-sheet structures, confidential facilities and delegated collections.

Following this analysis and considering our internal organisation, we chose a delegated collections solution, because our credit control process was already well established and we wanted to retain responsibility for customer collections.

AU Group then gathered all the information required to approach the selected factors and managed the entire tender process.

The team presented a detailed comparison supported by its proprietary methodology for calculating the contract's total all-in cost, taking into account service fees, financing costs and all ancillary charges.

Finally, AU Group supported us throughout the implementation of a factoring agreement with an independent factor and played a key role in negotiating financing terms tailored to our business. This included funding existing receivables prior to the facility going live, together with flexible arrangements for receivables only partially covered by trade credit insurance.

We also greatly appreciated AU Group's availability and responsiveness. Less than one month elapsed between our initial meeting and the first funding drawdown.

What benefits have you achieved?

We now have a financing solution that is fully suited to our receivables portfolio while benefiting from more diversified funding sources. One of factoring's greatest advantages, in addition to its operational simplicity, is its ability to adjust automatically to significant fluctuations in monthly turnover resulting from changes in coffee prices.

In your opinion, what is the greatest strength of your partnership with AU Group?

AU Group's greatest strengths lie in its independence and its deep expertise in both factoring and trade credit insurance.

Its ability to provide genuine specialist insight across both receivables financing and trade credit insurance has proved extremely valuable, as these two areas are closely interconnected. Alongside the implementation of our factoring programme, AU Group also worked with our credit insurer to optimise our insurance cover and, consequently, our financing capacity. This holistic approach was undoubtedly one of the key strengths of our partnership.