GRAPHIC:

RIC is celebrating 5 years 

delivering concessional loans 

supporting farms and farm-related businesses

strengthening Australian agriculture

00:00:15:21 - 00:00:51:10
Angas Swann
In small business, particularly in farming, in the start-up world, it's really difficult to get funding in the early stages. And then we came across the RIC loan and it seemed to tick a lot of boxes.

GRAPHIC:
91% of RIC-assisted farmers agree their concessional loan made drought recovery easier.
Source: JWS Research, 2022

00:00:51:12 - 00:01:20:05
Danny Le Feuvre
We had a whole heap of debt parked in our business that was attracting reasonably high interest rates and requiring interest and principal repayments to be made, which was really putting a strain on the cash flow. So we parked it and focused on just maintaining the interest payments and really ramp up our repayments into our high-interest loans, our commercial loans and the business, and that was able to really stabilise our cash flow. And without that, during the drought, I don't think we would have survived.

00:01:20:07 - 00:01:55:10
Aman Grewal
That Drought Loan, it enabled us to sort of further invest in our properties to make them futureproof and more equipped for, I guess, droughts in the future, which involved changing crop varieties, planting densities and all the rest of it so that we can produce in our properties more efficiently over the years. This will enable us to prepare for the future of irrigation, water and droughts.

GRAPHIC:
82% of RIC loans support sheep, beef cattle & grains agricultural industries.
Source: RIC & ABARES 2020-21

00:01:55:12 - 00:02:16:11
Kylie George
We've gone from fattening cattle on our last property to breeding. So when we were looking at the RIC loan with having the lower interest rate rather than having the huge repayments, it’s just taking that burden back and given us that time to have progeny in our cattle and to get income going again from there.

00:02:16:13 - 00:02:28:15
Stu Halliday
The RIC loan allowed us a little bit of freedom. It allowed us to keep stock which we would have had to sell at a low during the drought, which is probably not the thing that most farmers want to do.

00:02:28:17 - 00:02:52:09
Sam Elphinstone
When I got the RIC loan, I'd just built two new dams and then I made one dam bigger. So I pretty much made my water capacity nearly 70% more water than I had. Now I can grow a lot of volume and good crops need a lot of water.

GRAPHIC: 
$67 million - estimated savings in interest repayments for farm businesses with RIC loans in FY21-22. 

00:02:52:11 - 00:03:16:22
Jo Rolfe
After we actually were granted the loan we could see that it was going to make a quite a big difference for us to have some respite from the heavy-duty interest rates that we were looking at, and obviously that provides lots of opportunities to go forward. So we've just been through an enterprise mix change and that made that all so much more doable.

00:03:16:24 - 00:03:49:14
Andrew Leslie
The way I use the RIC loan was I used it to refinance 50% of my commercial debt, so there was a cash flow savings there. But I've actually used that cash flow savings to invest in upgrading equipment. And that equipment has had the flow-on effect of reducing my operating costs. It's actually creating opportunities for us to act on in the future.

GRAPHIC:
89% of RIC loan farm businesses reported greater confidence in the future of their operations.
Source: JWS Research, 2022

00:03:49:16 - 00:04:08:06
Lorna Jones
So the loan has changed the future of our business by just giving us a little hope. Being able to invest more into our land has meant we invested more into our future. And it's given us that hope that we can grow and we can say, one day to any of our children, if you want to come on the farm, then that is a possibility.