We buy production machinery that is coming out of service.

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American Plant & Equipment Asset Recovery
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Whole lines and whole sites

Closing a plant, or shutting a line?

We handle the machinery side: valuation, sale, removal and export. You keep running the closure, and the equipment stops being the part nobody has time for.

Start a confidential conversation Get the closing checklist

A closure has 2 dates that govern everything on the equipment side, and most plans find them late. The first is the lease or site handover date, because it usually will not move. The second is the day utilities go off, because almost every removal task needs power, light and compressed air. Everything else on this page is downstream of those 2 dates.

What we do on a closure

Six things, in the order they usually happen.

  1. Value the equipment

    In writing, against the timeline you actually have, with the standard of value named. Under a non-disclosure agreement if the closure is not public.

  2. Split the floor by route

    Most closures use more than 1 route. The good machines go one way, the general plant equipment goes another, and a few things are honestly scrap.

  3. Buy outright, or place it

    We buy what fits our buyer network and pay for it. Where a machine will do better with an end user, we place it directly with one.

  4. Plan the removal against your dates

    Sequenced by access rather than by value, worked against the utilities schedule, and agreed with whoever still holds the keys.

  5. Disconnect, rig, crate and ship

    Millwrighting, rigging, export crating, documents and freight. Your team keeps its own list short.

  6. Sign the floor out

    Every machine recorded: what it was, who took it, when, and on whose authority. That record is what stops an argument 6 months later.

The fears this page exists to answer

It is confidential and cannot be announced yet

Then it stays confidential. A buyer can price a list from 4 things: the machine detail, the region, the industry and the timeline. Not the site name, not the address, not your client's name. We work from that version until you tell us otherwise, and we will sign a non-disclosure agreement before the detailed list goes out.

We do not have the people to run a disposal project

Most closures do not. That is the argument for an outright sale: 1 counterparty, 1 agreed number, 1 removal window, and the risk of what the building hides moves to us. Your side of it is a list, a set of dates, and somebody with keys.

The date will not move

Tell us the date in the first email. It changes the advice, not the willingness. If the floor has to be empty in 3 weeks and the recovery matters less than the certainty, an auction will beat us on speed and we will say so.

Nobody knows what is actually on the floor

That is normal. The fixed-asset register is an accounting record and it will be wrong about half of it. Send what you have, however rough, and we will tell you what needs more detail before anybody can quote it.

Some of it is not ours to sell

Leased equipment, customer-owned tooling and machines against which a lender holds security all turn up in closures. Flag them early and keep them on a separate list. Sorting that out late is what stops a removal on the day.

What raises the recovery, in order

  1. Starting before the announcement rather than after the last shift.
  2. Leaving machines connected and demonstrable until they are sold.
  3. Keeping tooling, manuals, drawings and program backups with their machines.
  4. A list with 8 fields per machine and 5 photographs.
  5. Utilities and access kept live in the removal zone until the last machine leaves.
  6. 1 named person who owns the equipment from the first list to the last truck.

Every one of those is cheap. Together they are usually the difference between orderly liquidation value and forced liquidation value on the same equipment.

The 90-day timeline

What has to happen to the machinery in each month of a 90-day closure, who owns each step, and the 2 deadlines that govern the rest.

Read the timeline

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Confidential closures

How disposal work runs in parallel with a closure that has not been announced, and where the line actually sits.

Read the guide

Containerised combined heat and power gas generator package with pipework connections.

Tell us about the closure

More fields than our other forms, because this is a project rather than an errand and the answers save a week of email. Nothing here is published, and nothing commits you.

  • Confidential by default. Ask for a non-disclosure agreement and we will sort one out.
  • Region and industry are enough at this stage. We do not need the site name.
  • Answered by a person. If it is urgent, call (864) 574-0404.

Plant closure enquiry

State or country is enough at this stage.
A date, a month, or the words not announced.
For example: textiles, packaging, power generation.
Is the closure public yet
The constraint that matters most: a lease date, a utilities shut off, a lender, or a buyer already circling. Photographs help more than descriptions. Reply to our first email with them and they reach the same file.

Fields marked with an asterisk are required. Your message goes to our sales desk at sales@americanplantandequipment.com and nowhere else. We do not publish what you send us, and we do not sell or share it. See our privacy note.

Not announced yet?

Then nothing goes anywhere. Send the list with the site details left out, and we will treat it as confidential from the first email.

Get the closing checklist How confidential closures work

Or call (864) 574-0404 and ask for the asset recovery desk.