Industrial & Heavy Equipment

Heavy machinery doesn't fail quietly.

A refinery shuts down and millions evaporate overnight. Equipment sits idle while debt compounds. Supply contracts vanish and suddenly you're staring at a company that was built over decades unraveling in weeks.

We know this sector. The capital intensity, the complexity, the way a single bad quarter can trigger a cascade of problems that management wasn't trained to handle.

You don't restructure heavy equipment companies the same way you restructure retail. The assets are specialized, the customer relationships are long-term commitments, and the time between decision and result stretches across months, not days. By the time leadership admits there's a problem, the fire is already spreading.

Here's what we've learned: most industrial companies in distress don't have a manufacturing problem. They have a reality problem. Management sees the business they built, not the business that exists right now. They see contracts that should have renewed, prices that should have held, demand that should have returned.

Should is expensive.

We've walked into facilities where the equipment was world-class but the cash flow projections were fiction. We've seen oilfield manufacturers with millions in inventory they valued at cost, not market. Refineries that spent themselves into oblivion on projects that never reached completion.

The work starts with assessment, but assessment isn't analysis for its own sake. It's triage. Where is the company bleeding cash? What relationships are about to break? Which vendors will keep the lights on and which ones won't? We develop 13-week cash flows not because we love spreadsheets, but because you can't save a company when you don't know if you can make Friday's payroll.

Then comes the harder part. Restoration means choices. Sometimes it's negotiating with secured lenders who've already written you off. Sometimes it's explaining to founders that the international expansion was a mistake and California operations are all that's salvageable. Sometimes it's taking apart a $250 million refinery piece by piece and finding buyers for what's left.

Industrial companies are built on the belief that scale and machinery create competitive advantage. Often true. But machinery doesn't generate its own working capital. Equipment doesn't renegotiate payment terms. And heavy equipment companies in crisis discover that their greatest asset -all that specialized equipment- becomes their greatest liability when markets contract.

We've helped manufacturers restore liquidity through workout agreements that gave them breathing room. We've taken operational control when leadership couldn't see past what used to work. We've walked clients through the conversation they didn't want to have about what survival actually requires.

Some of our clients listened. Some chose their own path instead and ended up in receivership four months later.

The physics of restructuring don't change just because you want them to. Denial doesn't generate cash flow. Hope isn't a financial strategy. And waiting for markets to return to normal assumes normal is coming back.

Industrial companies fail for industrial reasons, but they're saved by facing reality faster than their competitors face it. The equipment might be heavy, but the decisions can't be. When your refinery is on fire, you don't commission a study. You put out the fire.

That's what we do.

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