Britannia AuctionsFactory and workshop clearance in Stoke-on-Trent
The potbanks set the pattern for clearance work in this city. When a tableware or sanitaryware factory closes, the plant runs from kilns and dryers through presses, casting benches, glaze mills and spray booths to thousands of plaster moulds, and the building is often old and spread over several levels. Around the ceramics trade sit plastics moulders, food manufacturers, building products makers and engineering firms whose clearances are more familiar.
On the estates, Etruria Valley and Fenton among them, the roads and hard standing were laid out around lorry movements, and what each yard and door actually takes is measured on our first visit.
We auction what has a market, and removing the fixed items and the residue afterwards can be arranged where agreed, so the landlord gets an empty building. Send us the site and the date through the contact form.
Kilns, moulds, presses and the potbank clearance
A ceramics clearance has lots that sell and lots that do not, and the split is not obvious from outside the trade. Isostatic and ram presses, jiggers and jolleys, pug mills, glaze spraying lines and spray booths suit other potteries, and the six towns are close enough to reach a viewing day while bidding online reaches buyers abroad. An intermittent kiln is worth offering where it can be moved whole. A tunnel kiln is normally part of the building, and its value is in the refractory and the metal frame.
Moulds are the awkward part. A working set of plaster moulds is worth something to a firm making the same shapes, and nothing to anyone else. We offer them to the trade first, in lots by pattern, before they are treated as waste.
Mould making and model shops, kiln furniture, saggars and the stock of clay and glaze all go into the catalogue. What does not sell is cleared with the residue, and refractory and plaster waste have their own disposal routes.
Wide roads and hard standing make collection quick
Collection here starts from the same survey as anywhere. The estates along the A500 and A50 were laid out for lorries, and at Fenton or Tunstall Trade Park we confirm the yard, the turning space and whether a road closure would be needed. The trade at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Crewe, Stafford and Uttoxeter is an hour away at most, and the A500 puts the M6 ten minutes off for anyone coming further.
So the timetable is set by the strip out rather than the loading. A tunnel kiln, once the auction lots are gone, is a demolition job with a scrap value at the end of it. Overhead extraction, glaze pipework, dust plant and the compressed air system come down with it. The plastics and food sites on Trentham Lakes are simpler, with conveyors, moulding machines, chillers and granulators that go out whole.
For the older multi level potbanks, the goods lift and the stairs decide what leaves in one piece.
What these sales can include
- Production machinery
- Machine tools and tooling
- Pallet racking and mezzanines
- Compressors and air receivers
- Extraction and filtration systems
- Overhead cranes and hoists
- Forklifts and pallet trucks
- Workbenches, cabinets and stores
- Electrical switchgear
- Office furniture and IT
- Scrap metal and redundant stock
- Vans and site vehicles
The auction stage
We catalogue every saleable item on site, from the main machines down to grouped lots of hand tools and stores. The sale runs online as a timed auction with a viewing day at the premises. The buyer pays the hammer price plus the premium, with VAT charged where it applies and shown separately, and collects during an agreed window.
Lots are offered as seen under the auction terms, and buyers are expected to inspect before bidding. They arrange and pay for dismantling and removal. Where an item must be taken down carefully, such as a mezzanine or an overhead crane, the catalogue says so and it is part of the lot.
You keep the premises accessible, safe and powered until collection ends. We attend to release lots. The more that leaves through the auction, the less there is to clear at cost afterwards.
The factory and workshop clearance page covers clearance is a different job from a sale, everything that has to come out, the clearance stage, timescales and what slows them down, when a clearance is the wrong approach.
Questions about selling in Stoke-on-Trent
- Our kilns are built into the factory. Can they be sold?
A kiln that can be moved whole, a shuttle or top hat kiln on a frame, is worth offering and is catalogued with removal terms. A tunnel kiln or a large intermittent kiln built in brick is normally part of the building and comes out as demolition. Its value is in the refractory bricks, which have a resale market where they come out clean, and in the steel frame, which is weighed in. We tell you which category each kiln falls into at the site visit, because it changes the strip out plan and the budget.
- We have thousands of plaster moulds. Is there a market for them?
A narrow one. Moulds for a shape that another pottery is making, or would want to make, sell as lots by pattern, and we offer them to the trade before the auction if the volume justifies it. Moulds for shapes nobody else produces become plaster waste, which needs a licensed route. Sorting them early is worth the time, because a pallet sold costs less than a pallet skipped, and the space they take up slows the rest of the clearance.
More questions about factory clearance
Related services
Guides
- How a commercial asset auction works
A stage by stage account of an online timed auction for business assets. It covers the asset schedule, cataloguing, viewing days, how bidding closes, buyer's premium and VAT, collection and how you get paid.
- Preparing machinery and equipment for sale
What to do before viewing day. Keep the machines that can be run safely available to demonstrate, isolate the rest, clean but do not repaint, find the tooling and manuals, and sort out access for removal.