Apple has joined Coca-Cola, IBM and other major companies as an early adopter in the new White House ‘SupplierPay’ program. The initiative is aimed at accelerating payments from these larger firms to smaller businesses in their supply chain.
The program is a private-sector extension of QuickPay, another federal initiative designed to ensure small contractors are paid within 15 days of submitting an invoice. This helps them avoid borrowing money, increasing their chances to succeed…
From the White House blog:
Today, President Obama announced the creation of SupplierPay, a new partnership with the private sector that will strengthen America’s small businesses by increasing their working capital. He’s also renewing the QuickPay initiative for federal small business subcontractors, which the President launched in 2011. […]
SupplierPay will help small businesses by increasing their working capital, so they can grow their businesses and hire more workers. In the SupplierPay initiative, companies commit to pay small suppliers faster, or help them get access to lower-cost capital.
One of the companies the White House highlights in the post is Metal Impact, a small business that mills aluminum for Apple’s just-redesigned Mac Pro. It primarily worked in the automative space before teaming up with the Cupertino company.
In a statement to TechCrunch yesterday, SVP of Operations Jeff Williams said that Apple spent more than $3 billion to over 7,000 small business suppliers in 2013, using SupplierPay. This includes the Elk Grove Village, Illinois-based Metal Impact.
Metal Impact credits Apple for aiding in its economic recovery over the past few years — during which they’ve tripled their business.
“Apple’s role in our recovery has been significant in both our financial results and, perhaps more importantly, the innovation they have provoked,” the company said in a statement. “Apple believed in us and has totally changed the way we look at our business today. Our work with Apple has inspired us to do things that had never been done before. Together we created an entirely new manufacturing process and have built something that we never imagined possible.
“We’re a tiny part of Apple’s incredible story but every time a customer looks at their Mac Pro, we hope they see the pride our team in Elk Grove Village put into making it.”
And this is just a small part of Apple’s $100 million campaign to bring manufacturing for the Mac Pro, and possibly other products, back to the US. The company has also invested heavily in sapphire crystal expert GT Advanced, which is based in Arizona.