Sencer Appraisal Associates values the machinery and equipment used across the cannabis and hemp industry, from cultivation rooms and drying spaces through extraction suites, testing labs, infused product kitchens, packaging lines, and dispensary equipment. Our accredited appraisers have valued grow operations, oil extraction and distillation plants, and licensed processing facilities, and we prepare reports that lenders, accountants, courts, and state regulators can rely on.
Most people who call us need a documented number rather than a price. A lender underwriting equipment collateral, an accountant setting an opening balance sheet, a partner buying out another partner, a licensing authority asking what the capital assets are worth: each of those needs a signed opinion of value from an accredited appraiser, prepared to a recognized standard. Sencer Appraisal can help.
Request a proposal or call us toll-free at 888-473-6237.
Why owners and lenders order a cannabis equipment appraisal
Cannabis operators buy heavily, expand fast, and often carry incomplete fixed asset records. When a transaction, a filing, or a dispute arrives, someone has to establish what the equipment is actually worth. We are engaged for:
- Financing, equipment leasing, and asset-based lending
- Financial reporting for business combinations, including opening balance sheets and purchase price allocations under ASC 805 and ASC 820
- State licensing and regulatory filings that require a capital asset valuation
- Partnership arrangements, buy-sell agreements, and shareholder disputes
- Loan workouts, deed-in-lieu transactions, and collateral evaluation
- Insurance placement and loss claims
- Litigation, arbitration, bankruptcy, and marital dissolution
- Property tax appeals and assessment review
- Estate and gift tax filings
- Mergers, acquisitions, and due diligence
Who we work with
Cannabis equipment appraisals rarely start with the equipment owner alone. We are retained by banks and specialty lenders financing cultivation and processing assets, by CPAs and controllers preparing financial statements, by attorneys in workouts, disputes, and dissolutions, by insurance brokers and adjusters, by private equity and investment funds holding operating companies, and by operators themselves who need a defensible number for a filing or a negotiation.
What we appraise
Cannabis is unusual among the industries we serve because a single facility can hold five or six distinct equipment categories, each with its own market. A grow room and an extraction suite have almost nothing in common as assets. We value all of it.
Processing and extraction equipment
Closed-loop hydrocarbon and CO2 extraction systems, ethanol extraction and recovery skids, rosin presses and ice water extraction equipment, wiped-film and short-path molecular distillation systems, rotary evaporators, vacuum and drying ovens, chillers and circulators, vacuum and recovery pumps, centrifuges, jacketed cooling tanks, reactor vessels, filtration and winterization equipment, decarboxylation ovens, and solvent recovery systems. We have valued equipment from manufacturers like Pope Scientific, Across International, BHOGart, PolyScience, Edwards, ULVAC, Welch, and Whaley Chillers.
Cultivation and harvesting equipment
Double-ended and LED grow light fixtures, ballasts, reflectors and lamps, ebb-and-flow benches, rolling grow tables and propagation trays, hydroponic and fertigation systems, reservoirs and vertical and horizontal liquid storage tanks, sump and drain pumps, inline and circulation fans, carbon filtration, mini-split air conditioning and air handling, dehumidifiers, environmental monitoring panels and controllers, CO2 and humidity monitoring, drying and curing room equipment, bucking machines, bud trimmers and sorters, and spin dryer systems. We have valued equipment from manufacturers including Gavita, Luxx, Sun System, Hawthorne Hydroponics, Innovative Growers Equipment, Botanicare, Anden, Quest and Therma-Stor, TrolMaster, Titan Controls, Bluelab, Hurricane, Heinzen, and Keirton.
Laboratory and testing equipment
High-performance liquid chromatography systems, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry instruments, sample preparation equipment, analytical balances, laboratory ovens and furnaces, cold traps, moisture analyzers, potency and contaminant testing instruments, laboratory furniture and fume hoods, and remediation and decontamination equipment.
Infused product, food, and beverage equipment
Botanical infusers, high-shear homogenizers and emulsifiers, jacketed kettles and mixers, chocolate melters, tempering machines, vibrating tables and cooling tunnels, gummy and candy depositors, de-moulding equipment and full confectionery lines, beverage filling and canning lines, dosing systems, steam tunnels, and bakery equipment. You can find information on our related work on our food processing equipment appraisal page.
Packaging and finishing equipment
Multi-head weigh fillers, vibratory feeders and grading equipment, baggers, counters and scales, pre-roll production and joint rolling machines, knockboxes, vape cartridge filling machines, form-fill-and-seal machines, continuous band sealers, labelers and label applicators, industrial and color labeling printers, container indexing conveyors, inspection and metal detection systems, palletizers and pallet wrappers. We have valued equipment from manufacturers like WeighPack, AstroNova and QuickLabel, Jorestech, and Zebra.
Retail, security, and support equipment
Dispensary display cases, point-of-sale terminals and currency counters, safes, vaults, and security cages and partitions, surveillance and access control systems, shelving and pallet racking, walk-in coolers and refrigeration, forklifts, scissor lifts, floor scrubbers and pallet jacks, delivery vehicles, and office furniture, computers, and network equipment.
We have valued retail and store fixtures across many industries for decades, so the front-of-house side of a licensed operation is familiar territory. Outdoor and field-grown operations often carry conventional agricultural machinery as well, which we cover on our farm equipment appraisal page. If your equipment is not listed here, contact us and we will tell you whether it falls in our scope of work.
Why cannabis equipment is harder to value than it looks
Cannabis equipment does not behave like most machinery in a secondary market. Three things make it difficult.
Much of the equipment installed during the industry’s build-out years came from suppliers that no longer exist, offered no service network, and left buyers without parts or support. Equipment from an established manufacturer with a dealer network behind it holds value. Visually similar equipment without that support often does not, and the difference does not show up in the purchase invoice.
A great deal of it is also crossover equipment. A chocolate tempering machine, a labeling line, a chromatography instrument, or a dehumidifier has buyers well outside the cannabis industry, and that broader market usually supports a higher value than a cannabis-only buyer pool would. Assets built specifically around one operation’s footprint and process have the opposite problem: fewer buyers and higher removal costs.
And a lot of it is bought ahead of demand. It is common to find substantial quantities still in original packaging, installed but never commissioned, or purchased for an expansion that never opened. Whether an asset is installed, uninstalled, or never made operational changes its value materially, and it changes it in different directions depending on the premise the assignment calls for.
Our cannabis equipment appraisal process
1. Purpose and standard of value
Before anything else we establish what the appraisal is for and which definition of value fits. A lender evaluating a workout needs orderly liquidation value. An accountant recording a business combination needs fair value. A licensing filing may call for fair market value in continued use. The same facility can produce very different numbers under different definitions of value, and choosing the wrong one is the most common reason a report fails when someone reads it closely.
2. Drawing the machinery boundary
In a cannabis facility the line between machinery and real property can be unclear. Installed walk-in coolers, permanently mounted lighting, and building HVAC are often fixtures belonging in a real property appraisal, while the same equipment sitting uninstalled on a pallet is personal property. We define that boundary in writing at the start, and we say plainly what the report excludes.
3. Identification and condition
We record manufacturer, model, serial number, specifications, and condition asset by asset, and we note installation status separately, because an installed asset and an uninstalled one carry different costs to the buyer. Where an asset is leased, or where equipment was never commissioned, we’ll flag it.
4. Research and analysis
We work from dealer and auction market data, current offering prices, historical cost records, and direct conversations with manufacturers and used equipment dealers who actually transact in this market. Where identical sales are scarce, we adjust from comparable assets and document the reasoning.
5. Reporting
You receive a signed report with a certification, stated assumptions and limiting conditions, defined value terms, and a full asset schedule with photographs. It is prepared to be read by a lender’s credit committee, an auditor, a regulator, or opposing counsel.
Common questions
Cannabis Equipment Appraisal FAQ
Questions we are asked most often by cannabis and hemp operators, their lenders, their accountants, and their counsel.