Britannia AuctionsMachinery and engineering auctions in Telford
The factories Telford was built for came with toolrooms. The automotive component makers and plastics moulders on Hortonwood, Stafford Park and Halesfield each keep a room of machine tools to make and repair the press tools and mould tools their production runs on. Spark eroders, wire eroders, jig grinders, surface grinders and toolroom mills, often better looked after than the production plant next door.
When a moulding contract moves or a component line ends, the toolroom is sold with it, and it is the part of the sale the engineering trade turns up for. We catalogue it machine by machine, separate from the presses and moulding machines, so the two sets of buyers each find what they came for.
Access on the estate roads is checked before the catalogue is written. Tell us what you have through the contact form.
Two kinds of buyer in one component factory
A component maker's sale is really two sales in one building. The injection moulding machines, presses and assembly lines go to other moulders and to dealers who trade in production plant, and they are judged on tonnage, hours, control and age. The toolroom goes to the engineering trade, and it is judged on accuracy and condition.
We catalogue them separately and advertise them separately. The moulding lots are listed by clamp force, shot size, control and hours, and the toolroom lots by make, model, table size, axis travel and what tooling comes with them. The mould tools themselves usually belong to the customer and stay out of the sale, and we check that during our first visit.
The toolroom trade in Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury and Stafford, and further along the M54, is well placed for the viewing day. Buyers for the moulding plant are fewer and more spread out, which is why the online catalogue matters more for those lots than the viewing day does.
A mezzanine, a phase number and a lorry at the door
The estates here were built with lorries in mind, and where a lorry can stand at a unit on Hortonwood or Halesfield is measured during our first visit rather than assumed from the address.
What complicates removal in Telford is inside the building rather than outside it. Toolrooms are often on a mezzanine or in a first floor room with the small machines carried up when the unit was new. What a surface grinder on a mezzanine needs depends on its weight, its dimensions and the route down, and the catalogue says what we found. Tool stores are racked to the roof and the tooling has to be lotted before anything moves.
We also make sure the address in the catalogue carries the phase number. The estates are large and a buyer looking for the wrong phase on viewing day is a buyer who goes home.
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 Telford
- We have injection moulding machines and a toolroom in the same unit on Stafford Park. Is that one sale or two?
One sale, two catalogues within it. The moulding machines and the toolroom are advertised to different trades and listed in their own sections, but they close on the same day and collect in the same window, which keeps the cost down and the unit cleared on one timetable. If a single late model moulding machine or eroder is worth more sold privately, we say so and offer that route for that machine while the rest goes to auction.
- Our unit on Halesfield has the small machines on a mezzanine. Will that stop them selling?
No, but it changes the price of moving them. How a grinder or a small mill comes down from a mezzanine depends on its weight, its dimensions and the route, and the buyer's mover prices that in. We photograph the mezzanine and the stair and put it in the catalogue so nobody is surprised. Where the machines are light enough they can be brought down before the viewing and sold from the ground floor, if that is agreed and can be done safely.
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.