Britannia AuctionsSurplus equipment sales in Northampton
Racking comes down in this town every week. A pallet network changes the layout of a depot at Brackmills, a retailer moves a contract out of Swan Valley, a haulier at Pineham renews its truck fleet under a new hire agreement and the old counterbalances are parked up. That is the bulk of Northampton's surplus by weight, and it has a ready market on the same estates.
The rest is smaller and more varied. Footwear manufacturing still runs on a modest scale and produces clicking presses, sole presses, lasting machines and finishing kit as lines change. Food, engineering and print firms on Moulton Park and Round Spinney replace machines and keep the old ones for a while. Motorsport suppliers hold tooling from a season that has ended.
Whatever the mix, we catalogue it on site, sell it by online timed auction and book collection around your operation.
Forklifts and racking on a fleet renewal cycle
Warehouse surplus tends to arrive in batches. A new lease on a truck fleet puts ten forklifts in the yard at once. A relayout takes down two hundred bays of racking. A parcel depot upgrades its sortation kit and the old conveyors and scanners come out over a weekend.
We sell these in lots that match how buyers use them. Forklifts sell singly, with hours, mast height, capacity and attachments stated, and a photograph of the plate. Racking sells by the run, described by system, frame height and beam length, and buyers dismantle their own in a booked slot. Conveyor and sortation gear is split into sections that a smaller operator can fit.
The trade is close by. Hauliers and warehouse operators in Wellingborough, Kettering, Daventry and Towcester are within half an hour of Brackmills, and dealers bid online from the rest of the country and send a transporter. What the yard and the door will take is checked when we walk the site, so collection can be timetabled around what we find.
Shoemaking and motorsport kit from the smaller units
Footwear machinery is a specialist market. Clicking presses, sole presses, toe lasting machines, stitching heads and finishing kit are catalogued for other makers in the town and for repairers and small workshops across the UK, and export interest is possible where the sale justifies the shipping. We describe each machine by make and model and photograph the working parts. The catalogue says whether it ran when we saw it.
Motorsport suppliers around the A43 corridor towards Silverstone generate surplus of a different kind, machine tools, dyno and test kit, composite ovens and the tooling from a programme that has finished. Some of it is customer owned and has to go back. The rest is catalogued for engineering buyers nationally.
The older estates near the town centre are laid out differently from Brackmills. We check the route for a press or a machining centre before it is listed, and the catalogue says how it comes out.
What these sales can include
- Machine tools and CNC equipment
- Forklifts and access platforms
- Pallet racking and shelving
- Compressors and air tools
- Welders and fabrication kit
- Vehicles and trailers
- Test and measurement equipment
- Site accommodation and containers
- Packaging and labelling machines
- Obsolete stock and components
- Office furniture and IT
- Catering and canteen equipment
Selling from a live site
Most surplus sales happen inside a business that is still trading. That changes how we work. Cataloguing is done around your shifts. Viewing is by appointment or on a single day, with visitors signed in and escorted. Collection is booked in slots so that nobody is moving a machine through the middle of a production run.
Items that are still bolted down, plumbed in or connected to services are isolated by a competent person before collection, with electrical and gas disconnection done by qualified people. Buyers arrange and pay for the removal of their lots, and they do not disconnect services themselves.
Tell us about anything that affects access: weight limits on floors, door heights, crane availability, restricted hours. It all goes in the catalogue so buyers plan the removal properly.
The surplus equipment sales page covers what counts as surplus, one sale or a standing arrangement, pricing, reserves and the buyer's premium, after the sale.
Questions about selling in Northampton
- Our racking is still part loaded with slow moving stock. Do we have to empty it before the sale?
Not before the sale, but it needs to be empty before the buyer's dismantling slot. Bidders can view racking that is standing and loaded, and often prefer to, because they can see it is straight and undamaged. We photograph it in that state and give you a date by which the runs need to be clear. If the stock itself is surplus, we can list it in bulk lots in the same sale and let the buyers empty the racking for you.
- Will shoemaking machines sell if the trade in the town keeps shrinking?
The question to ask of each machine is whether the type is still in use. The pool of makers is smaller than it was, but the machines are durable, and repairers, small workshops and cottage makers use the same equipment. Export interest is possible on larger lots. We would not promise strong prices, and some old finishing kit is worth little, but a well described clicking press or lasting machine has somewhere to go. You get a view on likely interest before you commit.
More questions about surplus equipment
Related services
Guides
- 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.