Britannia AuctionsSurplus equipment sales in Portsmouth
An island city has its own logistics. Most of Portsmouth's workshops sit on Portsea Island or just off it, on the Airport Industrial Estate at Hilsea and the older estates at Fratton, Cosham, Paulsgrove and Farlington, and everything that leaves them goes out over the same few roads. We plan collection with that in mind.
The surplus itself comes from the naval and defence work that shapes the city. Electronics firms clear test benches and environmental chambers when a programme closes. Precision manufacturers replace machine tools and keep the old ones for a year in case. Ship repairers and the boatyards at Trafalgar Wharf hold welders, hoists, jacks and hydraulic kit that the last refit needed and the next one will not.
We catalogue on site, sell by online timed auction and manage collection in booked slots so that your production carries on. A list through the contact form is enough to start.
Test benches and chambers when a defence programme closes
Defence electronics produces surplus in a form that needs careful description. Signal generators, spectrum analysers, oscilloscopes, environmental and vibration chambers, soldering and inspection stations, ESD benches. Much of it is high in value and small in size, and the buyer is often a laboratory or a contract manufacturer bidding online from the other end of the country.
We list each instrument with its model, serial number, last calibration date and condition, and, where an instrument can be run safely, we photograph the screen powered up. That is what a technical buyer needs to bid with confidence, and it is the difference between a rack of kit a buyer can judge and one they cannot.
Anything with a security marking, a customer asset tag, government furnished equipment or a customer's software stays out of the sale until you have cleared it with the customer. We ask about this when we first visit rather than on the day.
Getting lots off Portsea Island
Hilsea and the airport estate sit close to the M275. Fratton and the streets behind it are older and tighter, with shared yards and units that open straight onto the road. What a machine tool in one of those needs depends on the door, the route out and the road itself, so we check before we publish and put the answer in the catalogue, the day of the week included.
Dunsbury Park at Havant and the boatyards at Portchester are off the island and are checked in the same way. A boatyard has its own snags, though. Cradles, trailers, chandlery racking and outboard test tanks tend to be part buried in the yard, and a low loader on a slipway is a risk we would rather avoid.
The trade in Gosport, Havant and Fareham, along the A27 from Chichester and in Southampton, is a short trip from the viewing day. Everyone else bids online and sends a haulier.
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 Portsmouth
- Our unit is in Fratton and shares a yard with three others. Can you still run a sale from it?
Yes, with planning. Cataloguing and photography take a few hours and disturb nobody. Viewing is by appointment on a single day and we escort visitors. Collection is the part that needs care in a shared yard, so we book buyers into short slots, tell the other tenants the dates, and keep one vehicle in the yard at a time. Where it helps, heavy lots can be booked for a time before the trade counters open. If the yard really cannot take it, we collect and sell from our own premises.
- Refit work drops off over winter. Is that the right time to sell boatyard kit?
It is a reasonable time to catalogue and sell, because the yard is quieter and the kit is not in use. Marine tools, hoists and welding plant are used by yards and mobile engineers whose own season starts in spring, so a sale that closes in late winter, with collection before the season, lets a buyer put the kit to work at once. A summer sale can work as well. The difference is mostly one of convenience.
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.