Backing a new broadcast business: financing EnterTec’s move into hybrid power

About EnterTec and Potential Difference

EnterTec is an Aylesbury-based entertainment technology company that provides bespoke audio visual and power solutions for events across the UK and Europe. The 12-person team has decades of combined production delivery expertise, and works across everything from corporate conferences and awards dinners to festivals, theatres, and community productions.

It’s also the parent business behind Potential Difference, a newer challenger brand focused solely on sustainable broadcast power for TV, Film, and Location services – whether that’s Red Bull Hardline UK televised from the Welsh mountains, or London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks on the South Bank.

The group of businesses is trusted to manage the technical backbone of a multitude of events and broadcast scenarios, supplying and maintaining a comprehensive array of equipment that enables event organisers, venues and OB production teams to deliver safely, sustainably and at scale.

The challenge

Potential Difference operates in live broadcast environments with almost no margin for error, where power failures can take productions off air and potentially trigger immediate penalties. Delivering this level of power sustainably means investing in bespoke hybrid hardware: compact, high-spec vehicle builds combining Stage V HVO-fuelled engines, LiFEPO4 batteries and multiple mains inverters to ensure resilience and redundancy.

These assets are expensive, slow to build and still rare to see in the market.

After securing an initial hybrid generator truck from another operator who had entered into liquidation, Potential Difference wanted to convert an existing truck chassis it already owned into a second customised hybrid generator. It was the most efficient way to scale capability quickly, but it introduced a funding challenge.

The lender needed to support a bespoke conversion delivered in stages, payments to the coachbuilder throughout and a final commissioning payment due once the asset was complete. Without a complete asset, Potential Difference knew most traditional lenders wouldn’t fund the deal.

The challenge was finding finance that could support a bespoke hybrid build mid-process, without fragmenting ownership or cash flow.

The solution

After a positive experience funding the initial hybrid generator truck with Catalyst, EnterTec returned to us when it was ready to invest in the next key stage of this more complex build. This time, the challenge wasn’t speed – it was structure.

Rather than splitting the chassis, build and final commissioning into separate agreements, we structured a single funding package that reflected how the hybrid generator would be built. Our team managed negotiations between EnterTec, the specialist coachbuilder and the lender, pushing for better terms and keeping the business updated without pulling them into day-to-day detail.

The finance solution included:

• Establishing a fundable market value for the owned chassis by agreeing on its sale to the coachbuilder and rolling that value into the final build cost
• Aligning funding to the build programme, with funds released at agreed milestones to accommodate stage payments to the coachbuilder as per their terms, rather than on delivery
• Building in a retention mechanism so the final payment was only released once commissioning was complete and approved.

The result was a finance package that enabled the business group to scale up this element of their services without disruptions or overcomplicating its finances.

The results

As a result of the funding structure we arranged, EnterTec and Potential Difference:

• Brought a bespoke hybrid generator into operation, completing a seven-month conversion and commissioning process without delays
• Protected cash flow during the build, avoiding the need to front-load capital
• Safeguarded the build quality and delivery, with final payment released once the vehicle was fully commissioned.
• Secured reimbursement of its initial deposit in four to six weeks, allowing the team to proceed without losing the build slot
• Established a repeatable funding structure for future fleet investment, now being used to plan additional builds.