🎯 The business: used filling, capping, labeling, sealing and cartoning lines bought from U.S. food, beverage, cosmetics and pharmaceutical plants that retool, and sold to manufacturers in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines whose factories are expanding faster than new equipment lead times allow. High ticket, technical, and a market that rewards the dealer who can commission the line.
Food and beverage manufacturers, contract packagers, cosmetics and consumer goods factories, and the local equipment dealers who serve them. A used bottling line that cost $800,000 new sells at auction for $60,000 to $150,000 and in Southeast Asia for $150,000 to $350,000 installed. Buyers pay by letter of credit with a deposit; many want installation and training in the price.
| LLC and insurance | $1,500 |
| Auction and liquidator registration, listings on the industrial equipment marketplaces | $1,500 |
| A packaging-line technician or engineer as a partner for inspection and commissioning | per project |
| Travel to inspect lines, video and documentation | $3,000 |
| Deposits on a first brokered line, or capital for a first purchase | $10,000 to $100,000 |
| Gold Key in Ho Chi Minh City or Jakarta, ProPak Asia visit | $5,000 |
| Total: broker ≈ $12,000 · inventory ≈ $100,000 and up |
Partner with a packaging engineer; the buyer’s questions are technical and the commissioning is the hard part. Watch plant liquidation auctions for complete lines rather than single machines. Document each line with video under power, the manuals, the change parts and the spare parts list. Attend ProPak Asia in Bangkok or book a Gold Key. Sell as a broker first, with the deposit covering the auction purchase.
A brokered line at $220,000 with a 12 percent margin is $26,000 per deal, plus a commissioning fee of $15,000 to $30,000 for your engineer’s two weeks on site. Two or three lines a year is a business. Dealers who hold inventory earn far more per line and tie up far more cash; most start as brokers and move to inventory for the fastest-moving line types.
Export controls are light for packaging machinery but check any line with specialized aseptic or pharmaceutical capability. Destination rules on used machinery (Vietnam restricts used equipment by age, commonly ten years, and requires inspection certificates; Indonesia requires permits for used capital goods). Electronic export filing. Work visas for your engineer’s commissioning trip. Contracts that define acceptance tests and what counts as commissioned.
A line older than the destination’s age limit, discovered at customs. Missing change parts that make the line useless for the buyer’s bottle size. Commissioning that takes six weeks instead of two. Deposits that stall. The dealers who last sell complete lines with manuals, write acceptance tests into the contract, and keep an engineer who has started that line type before.