Decommissioning and Monetization
We decommission structural steel, industrial plant and heavy machinery and turn end-of-life assets into immediate liquid capital. Valuation, dismantling, removal, remittance.
Every industrial site eventually holds something that has stopped earning. A production line replaced by a newer one. A warehouse frame after the tenant leaves. A fleet past its economic life. A boiler nobody has fired in three years. That material is not waste. It is steel, copper, aluminium and cast iron at today's price, and our decommissioning desk exists to take it down, weigh it, and pay for it.
What we decommission
Structural steel: warehouse frames, gantries, conveyors, pipe racks and platforms, cut and lifted in sections. Process plant: boilers, tanks, vessels, pipework and ducting, drained and made safe before cutting. Production machinery and heavy plant: presses, mills, generators, compressors and crushers, dismantled so motors, windings and non-ferrous fittings are recovered separately from the frame. Fleet and yellow plant: trucks, buses, excavators and loaders, depolluted and stripped. Electrical: transformers, switchgear and cable.
Valuation before the offer
We value the asset independently before anything is offered. A number produced by the party who intends to buy the scrap is an opening position, not a valuation, and accepting it is how sellers end up disappointed twice. Ours is done at published scrap prices, by grade, less the cost of recovery, and we show the workings: what tonnage of what grade, and what it costs to get it to the weighbridge. You see the basis of the number and you can decline. A valuation you can act on is more useful than one designed to win the job.
Making it safe, taking it down
Decommissioning is a site operation before it is a sale. We produce a method statement, isolate services, drain and depollute, and cut in a sequence that keeps the structure stable until the last section comes down. Our crews bring their own cutting gear, grabs, loaders and transport, so the site is not asked to provide plant it no longer has. Work is scheduled around your operations where the site is still live, and around your handover date where it is not.
Weighed, not estimated
Every lot crosses a certified weighbridge, on site where volumes justify one or at the nearest yard. You receive the ticket. Remittance is reconciled lot by lot against those tickets, and if recovered weight comes in above the valuation you receive the difference. There is no aggregated single figure with the workings withheld, because a process you cannot inspect is not a process you can rely on next time.
How long it takes
A retired production line is usually out within a week of the method statement being agreed. A warehouse frame takes two to three weeks depending on height and access. A full plant strip-out, with process vessels to drain and pipework to purge, runs to a month or more, and we schedule it in phases so the parts of the site still working keep working. Every job gets a programme before it starts and a weekly reconciliation while it runs, so you always know what has come down, what it weighed and what has been paid.
The paperwork your auditors need
Disposal creates an audit obligation. A fixed asset register listing equipment that has not operated for three years is a finding waiting to happen, and writing it down requires evidence. We provide the valuation report, the method statement, weighbridge tickets per lot, a disposal certificate and the remittance reconciliation. Your register is written down against documents rather than against a bank transfer with no explanation, and your auditors can see the sale was at arm's length.
Immediate liquid capital
Where the site needs cash before the last lot is off the ground, the financing desk pays an advance against the valuation before the first cut, with the balance following per ticket. A plant that has been costing floor space, insurance and depreciation for years becomes working capital in days. That conversion of end-of-life assets into immediate liquid capital is what the group was built to do, and this desk is where it happens on the ground.
When scrapping is the wrong answer
Occasionally a valuation shows an asset is worth more working or resold whole than as scrap, and the right recommendation is to sell it as equipment. We will say so, and route it through a tender rather than a cutting torch. A desk that recommends scrapping in every case is not advising, it is buying. Mother Earth needs to rest, and the best outcome for a machine that still runs is sometimes another decade of running.
Common questions
- What can you decommission?
- Structural steel frames, warehouses and gantries; process plant, boilers, tanks and pipework; production lines and heavy machinery; end-of-life fleet and yellow plant; transformers and substations. If it is metal and it has stopped earning, we can value it, take it down and pay for it.
- How do we know the price is fair?
- The valuation is done before the offer, at published scrap prices by grade, with the workings shown. You see the basis of the number and can decline to proceed. Every lot is then reconciled against a certified weighbridge ticket you receive.
- What documentation do we get?
- A valuation report, a method statement, weighbridge tickets per lot, a disposal certificate, and a remittance reconciliation showing what each lot weighed and paid. That is what your auditors and your fixed asset register need.
