Sale & leaseback turns the equipment you already own into capital you can spend. Sell the asset to a financier, lease it back, keep using it. The cash that was trapped in residual equity becomes working capital, fleet refresh deposit, or strategic dry powder — without disturbing your bank line.
The mechanic is straightforward. The strategic value comes from what you do with the released capital.
A specialist financier purchases the asset from you at an agreed market value and immediately leases it back under standard equipment-finance terms. The asset stays in your operation. Title sits with the financier during the lease. You operate exactly as before, with a fresh capital injection sitting in the bank.
Working-capital injection through a slow quarter or drought year. Deposit on a fleet refresh order. Funding portion of an acquisition. Dilution-free growth capital for an expansion that doesn't yet have asset security. Tax-effective conversion of trapped residual equity into deployable cash.
Done well, it converts dormant equity into deployed capital. Done badly, it strips long-term value for a short-term cash hit. The difference is in the use case and the structure.
As part of the broader $120M mining fleet refinance described on the Mining sector page, Novara structured a sale & leaseback against the operator's existing haul trucks — fully owned, well-maintained, with substantial trapped equity.
The release funded the working-capital portion of the expansion package without drawing on the bank line, and shifted the haul fleet from outright ownership onto a standard chattel-mortgage structure with predictable monthly cost. $14M of capital that had been sitting in the balance sheet became deployable cash.
Sale & leaseback transactions ride on the financier's confidence in the residual market for the asset. Specialist equipment financiers — particularly those with strong second-hand asset desks across mining, construction, transport, and manufacturing — are where the deepest appetite lives. Bank lenders participate selectively on prime paper. Knowing which lender values your specific fleet correctly is most of the deal.
Tell us what you own and how you'd deploy the capital. We'll tell you in the first call which lender will value the asset correctly and what the release will look like.