Britannia AuctionsMachinery and engineering auctions in Norwich
Norfolk engineering is farm engineering more often than not. The workshops that build and repair machinery for the county's farms hold welding sets, plate rolls, guillotines, lathes and pillar drills, and many of them are in villages a long way from the ring road. Add the maintenance shops inside the food processors, the packaging firms, the automotive engineering firms at Hethel and the printers with a fitter's bench, and the machinery we sell around Norwich is a wide mix.
The buyers are just as mixed. Farm engineers from Dereham, Wymondham, Diss and North Walsham bid for welding and fabrication plant they can put to work the same week. The precision lots from Hethel go to a national trade that bids online without ever seeing the county.
We catalogue on site, or collect and sell from our own premises when the workshop is remote. Tell us what you have through the contact form.
Fabrication plant that goes straight back to work
A farm engineer's workshop sells on usefulness. The buyer is another engineer, a contractor, a plant hire yard or a farm with its own workshop, and they want a guillotine or a set of plate rolls they can plug in on Monday. Condition matters more than age. A forty year old lathe with a true bed and a full set of chucks is worth more to that buyer than a newer machine with a worn slide.
So the catalogue says what works. Machines that can safely be run stay connected for the viewing day and your staff can demonstrate them where you agree to it, and we photograph the bed, the slides, the chuck and the controls and list the tooling that goes with each one. Welding sets are listed by process and amperage with the torch and leads shown.
The steel stock and the racking it sits on go in the same sale. Stock and racking suit the same buyers, and a workshop clears better when a buyer can take the stores as well as the machine.
A rigid lorry down a farm track
Workshops in Norfolk are often down a lane. What a rural site beyond the ring road needs depends on the vehicle access and the turning space, which we measure during our first visit, and it may mean a rigid lorry with a hiab rather than an articulated low loader.
We put that in the catalogue. Buyers price the removal before they bid, and a lot that says 'rigid access only, hiab load' gets honest bids rather than a dispute on collection day.
The estates are usually simpler, and they are checked the same way. Vulcan Road and Salhouse Road have older units with small yards, and Longwater and Rackheath are newer sites. Where a remote workshop holds mostly small plant, it can be collected to our own premises and sold from there where that is agreed, leaving the heavy machines to be removed from site.
What these sales can include
- CNC turning centres
- CNC vertical and horizontal machining centres
- Manual and toolroom lathes
- Milling machines
- Surface and cylindrical grinders
- Press brakes and guillotines
- Laser, plasma and waterjet cutters
- Bandsaws and cold saws
- Radial arm and pillar drills
- Welding sets and positioners
- Coordinate measuring machines
- Tooling, chucks and workholding
- Compressors and dust extraction
- Cranes, hoists and forklifts
Viewing, bidding and the buyer's premium
Machinery sales run as online timed auctions. The catalogue is published with photographs and specifications. Buyers register, view the machines on the viewing day, and bid online until the lots close. The sale is advertised to the engineering trade, and bidding is online and open to buyers across the UK and beyond.
The buyer pays the hammer price plus the buyer's premium. VAT is charged where it applies and shown separately on the buyer's invoice. Ask and we will go through the specifics for your sale. Where a buyer is overseas, they arrange their own export.
Machines are offered as seen under the auction terms, and buyers are expected to inspect before bidding, which is why the viewing day matters. Machines that can be run safely stay connected for the viewing day so your staff can demonstrate them where that is agreed, and everything else is isolated and left safe.
The machinery and engineering auctions page covers what the buyers want to know, what affects demand, reserves and estimates, removal and access, when a private sale beats an auction.
Questions about selling in Norwich
- Our engineering shop is on a farm outside Aylsham. Will buyers come out to view?
Some will. A viewing day at a rural workshop is a normal thing in the farm engineering trade. What we add is the online catalogue, with enough photographs and detail that a buyer in another county can bid without the trip. For the heavier machines we say plainly what vehicle can get in and out. A sale in a remote workshop works, it just needs better photographs and clearer access notes than one on an estate.
- We are a printer with a small maintenance shop, a lathe, a mill, a pillar drill and a few welding sets. Do you take a handful of machines?
Yes. A handful of machines from a maintenance shop is a normal lot list for us, and it often goes into a sale alongside plant from other Norfolk businesses so that the buyers for one see the other. Each machine still gets its own entry with make, model and photographs. If the printing plant itself is being sold at the same time we can run that in the same sale under separate advertising, so the print trade and the engineering trade both see what is there.
More questions about machinery auctions
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.
- How used machinery is valued
Buyers pay for what a machine will do for them, less what it costs to get it out and running. This guide explains how make, hours, tooling, demand and removal cost feed a guide price, and why that price is not book value.