Aliaxis Rewrites the Rulebook for LATAM Treasury Excellence

Over 15 short months, Aliaxis turned its LATAM treasury from a collection of disparate processes into a sleek, centralised powerhouse, earning them the TMI Best in Class Treasury – LATAM Award 2025. Here’s how they did it.

For Belgium-based Aliaxis, a global leader in fluid management solutions, the sprawling and often chaotic world of LATAM treasury operations was ripe for reinvention. Across 10 countries in the region, treasury faced significant challenges, including unmet credit line needs for working capital and FX hedging, cross-border cash restrictions, and complex, country-specific cash management requirements.

Additional issues included outdated processes such as Excel-based treasury management, manual banking operations and incomplete supplier data in a single ERP system, not to mention limited local IT resources. “Our treasury was functional but far from optimal,” reflects Séverine Le Blévennec, Global Head of Treasury. “The potential was there – we just needed the right approach to unlock it.”

As such, the team embraced an ambitious vision to build a centralised treasury operation that didn’t just manage liquidity but actively unlocked value – in just 15 months. The project aimed to select banking partners offering strong in-country support, advanced technologies, and suitable credit for the region and group revolving credit facility (RCF).

Among a long list of achievements, key wins included:

1. Radical simplification: The team reduced the bank network from 25 institutions to just three core partners, slashing complexity and strengthening relationships. Citi played a key role, providing solutions including Digital Onboarding and Interest Optimisation.
2. Automation as the engine: A new treasury management system (TMS) was implemented and integrated seamlessly with SAP and a regional payment hub using ISO 20022 standards, automating 98% of payments. In addition, 100% daily automated cash visibility was achieved. Next step will be transforming reconciliations from a manual burden to an automated process.
3. Proactive risk management: By securing significant working capital credit lines in local currency, replacing existing intercompany loans in USD, the team eliminated more than $40m in local unhedged FX exposure.

The deployment followed with a phased approach, led by the Brussels HQ team and supported by PwC, a single additional local resource, and the Costa Rica Shared Services Centre. And the hard work was underpinned by meticulous project management, supported by at least 60 internal and external stakeholders in cross-functional weekly meetings.

Making waves, not ripples

The impact of the transformation has been felt far and wide. Thanks to automation and centralisation, manual treasury tasks dropped by 30%, releasing the team to focus on strategic initiatives. Banking fees fell significantly, while optimised liquidity delivered a significant improvement in interest income and expenses. FX hedging was also vastly enhanced, delivering financial stability in volatile markets.

But it wasn’t just about improving the numbers. The project also fostered collaboration across regions and functions, proving that a treasury transformation can unite people as much as it reshapes processes.

Future-proofing fundamentals

As well as solving existing problems, the team also laid the groundwork for what comes next. From vendor master data clean-up (from 50,000 to 11,300 suppliers with related 271,000 payment fields!) to regulatory readiness, the project has future-proofed operations while demonstrating what treasury can achieve when empowered with the right tools and vision.

“This project wasn’t just about fixing what didn’t work,” concludes Le Blévennec. “It was about setting a new standard for how treasury can support growth and resilience, whether in LATAM or beyond.”