Heavy equipment bought for cancelled canal and infrastructure projects in the Middle East is being sold to Australia to service its booming mining industry, according to Euro Auctions’ general manager Jonnie Keys.
Commenting on world auction activity in Q1 2012, Keys says that heavy trucks such as Caterpillar 777s, 789s, and 797s, have been sold to where it is needed most – Australia – due to higher prices being paid for the machines.
“Where last year the trend was to ‘hang on’ to machinery until the price changed, that time has now come,” he said.
The deferred Arabian Canal project in Dubai, which had an estimated project cost of $9billion, had an enormous amount of equipment on the initial site, including a large number of Caterpillar D8 and D9 bulldozers, Komatsu D475a’s, as well as over 130 heavy trucks, such as the Cat 797B, which is capable of carrying a payload of 345 tonnes.
It comes as the Dubai Municipality has announced that it will resurrect the Business Bay Canal project.
The first phase will be construction of a pipeline system connecting the sea to the side of canal adjacent to Sheikh Zayed Road, followed by dredging works for the remaining parts of the canal, which are estimated by an amount of 750,000 m3.
This amounts to less than 0.5% of the 200,000,000m³ of dirt removal that had been planned for the Arabian Canal.
According to Keys, demand at Middle East auctions for machinery remains strong for lighter machines such as graders, dozers, backhoes and wheeled loaders, a reflection of the smaller projects that are moving forward.
“CAT is still number one and demand has shifted to older models up to the six years old with low hours.”