Britannia AuctionsPlant and construction equipment auctions in Sunderland
The big build sites at Washington have kept groundworks contractors busy for years. The battery plant and the International Advanced Manufacturing Park nearby are both projects that needed excavators, dumpers, rollers and rows of welfare cabins. When a main contractor demobilises, that plant is stood in a compound with nothing booked for it.
We sell it by online timed auction. The sale can run from the compound where the plant stands, from the contractor's own yard at Pallion or North Hylton, or from our own premises if the site has to be handed back first. Each machine is lotted with its hours, year and serial number, and buyers bid from across the UK.
Tell us what you have through the contact form. A list and a postcode is enough to start.
Welfare units and compaction plant are lots too
A site that is winding down has more than diggers to sell. Welfare units, drying rooms, toilet blocks and canteen cabins are lots in their own right and worth cataloguing properly rather than throwing in as a job lot. We photograph each unit inside and out, note the generator or the mains hook up, and describe the state of the floor and the doors. The same goes for fuel bowsers and lighting towers.
Compaction plant is the other thing a Washington build leaves behind. Rollers, plate compactors, trench rammers and the small tools that go with them come off the earthworks phase months before the building is finished, and they can be sold while the fit out is still under way rather than left standing. A machine that sits through a winter at the edge of a compound is not in the condition it was in October, and condition is one of the things the bidding follows.
Routes to the A19 and the local trade
Access is the easier part here. The estates at Washington and Hylton were laid out for articulated lorries, and the gates on Pattinson and Armstrong are the kind a low loader can usually reach, though we still check the turning space, the hard standing and the road outside before anything is listed. From there it is a few minutes to the A19 or the A1231, with the A1(M) close by.
That matters for buyers as much as for us. Houghton-le-Spring, Seaham, Peterlee and South Shields are a short trip from the viewing day, where the machines that can be run safely are started, and Durham and Gateshead are a short run up the motorway. The sale is online and open to buyers from any part of the country, and the port is on the doorstep for anything being shipped.
What these sales can include
- Excavators and mini diggers
- Dumpers and site dumpers
- Telehandlers
- Generators and lighting towers
- Compressors and breakers
- Rollers and compaction equipment
- Site cabins and welfare units
- Scaffolding and access equipment
- Concrete mixers and pumps
- Buckets, quick hitches and attachments
- Plant trailers
- Surveying equipment and small tools
- Fuel bowsers and tanks
How the auction works
Each machine is a lot with a full description, photographs and the hour reading. Bidding runs online for a set period, usually one to two weeks, and lots close in sequence. A bid in the last minutes extends the close for that lot.
Plant is offered as seen under the auction terms, and buyers are expected to inspect before bidding. The buyer pays the hammer price plus a buyer's premium, with VAT charged where it applies and shown separately on the invoice. Payment is required before removal.
Buyers arrange and pay for the removal of their lots within the agreed window. What that takes depends on the machine: wheeled plant with road registration can be driven away, and tracked or heavy machines go on a low loader. Nothing leaves the site until it is paid for and signed out.
The plant and construction equipment auctions page covers what buyers want to know, finance and ownership checks, where the sale runs from, reserves and the market, alternatives.
Questions about selling in Sunderland
- The main contractor wants the compound cleared by a fixed date. How do you time the sale?
We work back from the date. Bidding closes a week or so before the compound has to be empty, and the collection days sit between the close and the handover. Buyers pay us before they collect, so nothing leaves without cleared funds. If the date is tight we can move the plant to our own premises first and sell it from there, which takes the site out of the timetable altogether. Either way, tell us the handover date on the first call and we will plan around it.
- Our tooling business at Pallion has a telehandler and a couple of generators. Is that too small for you?
No. A single telehandler and two generators is a normal job for us. Plant from the automotive supply chain around Washington and Pallion has often lived indoors and been serviced with the rest of the factory, and where the records show that, they go in the catalogue. We can list the machines in a sale alongside other lots so that they sit in a full catalogue rather than on their own. If a single machine looks better suited to a private treaty sale to a dealer, we will say so.
More questions about plant and construction
Related services
Guides
- 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.
- Selling a commercial vehicle fleet
Fleet sales turn on paperwork as much as on price. This guide covers the V5C, MOT and plating documents, clearing finance before listing, keys and livery, recording mileage and tachograph data, and how to defleet in batches while still trading.