Food-processing plant in liquidation: restart diligence

The situation

A food-processing plant had moved from a failed CIRP into liquidation, with the liquidator exploring a sale as a going concern. A strategic acquirer in an adjacent category wanted to know whether the plant could be restarted economically — and at what number — before committing diligence spend or bidding.

Liquidation sales move on the liquidator's timeline. We had a narrow window to turn a public notice into a grounded view.

What we did

We ran a three-week diligence sprint. We started with the debt stack and the liquidation estate: secured creditors, the relative priority of claims under the waterfall, and what exactly was being sold — land, building, plant and machinery, and which licences would survive the transfer.

Then we visited the site. We assessed the condition of the processing lines, cold-storage and utilities after months of idling; identified what had degraded and what was salvageable; and pressure-tested the maintenance and statutory-licence position with the on-site team.

From that, we built a restart estimate: capital to recommission, working capital to first revenue, a realistic timeline, and the operating assumptions behind it. We separated must-spend from nice-to-have, and we showed the downside case where key equipment needed replacement rather than repair.

The outcome

The headline finding was that the real cost of ownership sat in recommissioning and working capital, not in the purchase price — and that the going-concern licences were worth more than the steel. That reframed how our client thought about the bid.

Armed with a defensible restart number and a clear-eyed view of the risks, the acquirer could set a disciplined ceiling for the liquidation sale. We make no representation as to the result of the process; we gave the client the operating truth needed to bid, or to walk away, without regret.