Industrial auctioneers Ritchie Bros sold $3.9 billion of plant, machinery and vehicles in 2012 – a record for the company.
During the year, the company registered 389,500 bidders at its auctions. It also sold equipment totalling $1.3bn to online bidders, amounting to 33% of total sales.
Peter Blake, CEO of Ritchie Bros, said he was pleased with the results against the backdrop of market turbulence.
“In 2012, we saw the intense competition for quality low hour used equipment recently transition to a less competitive and more familiar environment for our business to grow over the long term.
”These changes in the evolving equipment market contributed to our performance in the year where we saw significant gains in our online presence and bidder portal, with over 5 million unique visitors to our 21 language website and $1.3 billion in annual online equipment sales.”
In 2013, RB will hold its first auction in China, which will take place in Beijing during the first half of the year.
During 2012 RB also set a number of other company records including:
The largest equipment auction in RB’s history, with $203 million of equipment, more than 10,000 items, sold over six days in Orlando Florida in February;
The largest one-day auction in the company’s history, held in Brisbane, Australia, where more than $54m of equipment and trucks was sold to 1600 registered bidders;
And RB sales in Canada totalled more than $1bn during 2012, including a single sale in Alberta with more than $100m of equipment sold.
Individual big ticket items sold by the company included a 2008 Liebherr 400 ton all terrain crane, sold for $2,132,000; a 2000 Demag AC500-1 all terrain crane sold for $1,666,000; and a 2008 Caterpillar 777F 91 ton rock truck which sold for $1,311,000.
