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♻ Experts4Recycling
Technical Due Diligence · Sorting & Recycling Plants · Buy side & sell side

What the plant can deliver, checked before the price is set

The purchase price rests on tonnes per year, the permit and the condition of the equipment. The data room shows what the seller has documented. Whether it holds is a technical question – and it is cheaper to answer before signing than after closing.

Investors · Strategic buyers · Owners preparing a sale · M&A advisors · Lenders

I am buying a plant I am selling a plant

Where the data room and the plant diverge

In our TDD engagements the gaps tend to show up in the same three places. Each of them is negotiating leverage before signing – for whichever side knows about it first.

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Permitted versus installed capacity

The permit states one annual throughput, the business case assumes another, and equipment has been replaced since the permit was issued. Which number applies only becomes clear once permit, process description and installed equipment are compared.

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Rated capacity versus annual throughput

The data sheet gives tonnes per hour; the price is based on tonnes per year. The gap is downtime, maintenance, cleaning and changeovers. Where machines run in series without buffers, their availabilities multiply – plant availability ends up below that of its least reliable machine.

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Status of the technical file

For plants in the EU, every retrofit since commissioning raises the same question: was it a substantial modification under the machinery rules? If the data room holds no such assessment, the buyer inherits the question along with the plant.

Two sides, one technical scope

The plant is the same whichever side commissions the review. What changes is who learns the findings first and what they do with them.

BUY SIDE

Buyer TDD

For investors, strategic buyers and their lenders – before the binding offer or before signing.

  • Permitted versus installed versus operated capacity
  • Condition and remaining lifetime of process equipment and auxiliaries
  • Availability, maintenance history and spare-parts situation
  • CAPEX backlog and plausibility of the OPEX and the business plan
  • Permit status, compliance with permit conditions, CE status of the plant
  • Guaranteed values in supply contracts, residue and offtake routes
Findings rated by their effect on price, deal structure and warranties – not by engineering interest.
SELL SIDE

Vendor TDD

For owners, operators and funds preparing a sale – before the data room opens.

  • Technical part of the data room prepared and structured
  • Deviations between permit and actual operation identified, then closed or disclosed
  • Known CAPEX need quantified and built into the price expectation
  • Maintenance records and service contracts compiled as their own data room section
  • Output quality backed by laboratory analyses of the product
  • Independent vendor TDD report the buyer's advisors can work from
Whatever the buyer's TDD would find anyway, you see first – and decide how to handle it, instead of letting it set the price.

Two steps, in either direction

Start with a red flag review to decide whether to proceed. Deepen it into a full TDD when the deal moves forward.

TYPICALLY 2–3 WEEKS

Red flag review

Enough to decide whether the deal is worth pursuing, and at what price.

  • Desk review of the data room
  • One day on site, two engineers
  • Management Q&A
  • Short report with deal-relevant findings and indicative CAPEX needs
TYPICALLY 4–6 WEEKS

Full TDD

The same topics in depth, as the basis for the SPA and the financing.

  • Two days on site per plant, two engineers
  • CAPEX, OPEX and business plan review
  • Permit review and gap check against best available techniques (BAT)
  • Report in English or German with a findings register

Two people on site. We carry out the on-site part of every TDD with two engineers.

Where a project is highly specialised – for example flue gas cleaning in thermal treatment, or sterilisation and infection control – we bring in further experts case by case, under our lead. You keep one contact and one report.

What you receive

Documents that hold up in front of the other side, the investment committee and the lender.

  • Findings register, rated by deal relevance
  • Capacity reconciliation: permitted, installed, operated
  • CAPEX backlog with indicative figures
  • Permit and compliance gap list
  • Open questions for the management Q&A
  • TDD report in English or German
The point: the technical risk becomes a number and a clause. That is what a price adjustment, a specific indemnity or a closing condition can be built on.

Why Experts4Recycling

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Plant concepts, read fast

More than 20 years of plant engineering, greenfield and brownfield. An engineer who has planned plants understands a plant concept quickly – and sees where it does not match the figures in the data room.

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Both sides of the plant

Experience on the supplier side and on the operator side of sorting and recycling plants. We know where a data sheet stops and the plant begins.

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Written for the deal

Every finding is tied to its source – permit, contract, data sheet, measurement – and to its effect on price and deal structure.

20+ yearsPlant engineering – supplier and operator side
70+ countriesProject experience across 4 continents
4 languagesEN · DE · FR · ES at negotiation level
CertifiedWaste-management director (§ 26 AWG, Austria)
Recent work. Technical due diligence on PE film recycling plants in Poland and the United Kingdom. Owner's engineer for a municipal operator in Czechia on the modification of a sorting plant – see our owner's engineering page. Client names on request, subject to their consent.

Discuss a transaction – confidentially

A few lines on the plant and the deal stage are enough. We reply within 24 hours.

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DI Thomas Baldt will come back to you personally within 24 hours.

For urgent matters you can reach us directly at
+43 664 73030310 – phone or WhatsApp – or office@experts4recycling.com