Here’s a number that should stop every business owner, lender, and advisor in their tracks: business closures in Singapore hit an eight-year high of 60,445 in 2025, and across the water, Australia recorded historically high liquidation levels too, with hundreds of court liquidations every single month. Behind every one of those closures is a business with physical assets (equipment, machinery, inventory, vehicles, and fitouts) that needed to go somewhere. The brutal truth? Most of it was sold for far less than it was worth. And if you’re reading this, you need to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
When a business closes, whether it’s a planned wind-down, an insolvency, or a forced restructure, the focus immediately goes to creditors, legal obligations, and paperwork. The physical assets? They become an afterthought.
That’s the most expensive mistake you can make.
Wholesale trade, professional services, and information and communications accounted for the largest number of closures in Singapore in 2025, sectors filled with warehouses of equipment, specialised machinery, technology infrastructure, and commercial fit-outs. Every single one of those businesses had assets with real, recoverable value. But without an expert in their corner, most walked away with cents when they should have had dollars.
The question isn’t whether your assets have value. They do. The question is whether you know what that value actually is and whether you have the right people to maximise what you recover.
You move too fast. Pressure from creditors, landlords, and legal timelines pushes businesses to take the first offer on the table. First offers are almost never the best offers. Without a current, independent valuation, you have no leverage, no benchmark, and no way of knowing what you’re giving away.
You don’t know who the buyers are. The difference between a local clearance and a global sale can be enormous. A piece of manufacturing equipment sitting in a Singapore warehouse might be worth three times more to a buyer in Vietnam, Indonesia, or Australia than to anyone locally. Without a global buyer reach, you never find out.
You treat all assets the same. A plant closure involves dozens of different asset classes, each with its own market, its own buyer pool, and its own optimal sale method. Bundling everything into a single clearance sale is the fastest way to destroy value. The right approach is a tailored strategy for each asset class, executed by specialists who know exactly where the demand is.
Imagine you’re a lender with exposure to a business that’s just gone into administration. The borrower’s balance sheet shows $2 million in plant and equipment. But what’s it actually worth today, in this market, sold the right way? That number determines your recovery position, and you need it fast, accurately, and from someone who can back it up.
Or you’re a restructuring advisor managing a wind-down for a wholesale trade business, one of the most affected sectors in Singapore right now. Your client needs maximum returns from their assets to settle creditors. Every dollar recovered matters. Who’s in your corner to make sure nothing gets left behind?
Or you’re the business owner. You’ve made the hard decision to close. You’ve worked for years to build something; the least you deserve is to walk away with everything your assets are genuinely worth.
60,000 closures in Singapore. Hundreds of liquidations every month in Australia. Each one is a business that deserves better than a rushed, undervalued asset disposal.
The businesses that recover maximum value from their assets all have one thing in common: they got expert help early, before the pressure mounted and the offers came in low.
With years of combined APAC experience and access to buyers across 26 countries, Hilco APAC exists for exactly this moment. Don’t leave money on the table. Talk to our team today.
Ready to find out what your assets are really worth? Speak to the Hilco APAC team today.
Have an excess, obsolete or returned stock challenge? Talk to us.
Rochelle has forged a career as a Retail inventory specialist over 18 years across auctions, marketplaces, eCommerce and Retail, locally and internationally. Having worked for both high growth start-ups and Australia’s largest retail corporations, Rochelle has seen the myriad of challenges faced by Retailers in complex inventory environments.
As Director, Wholesale at Hilco Global, Rochelle translates this expertise in buying, sourcing and trading, offering clients strategies that can be deployed immediately in solving inventory challenges at scale.
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