Ritchie Brothers opens permanent French auction site
17 July 2008
Leading industrial equipment auctioneer Ritchie Bros officially opened its second permanent auction site in Europe on the 27th June at Saint Aubin sur Gaillon, west of Paris.
The 20 hectare site becomes the 28th permanent auction facility operated worldwide by the company and offers 150,000m2 (1.6 million ft2) of storage space for machines.
The grand opening auction saw 380 registered buyers bid for a total of 1,030 lots, with a total of E9.6 million (US$15.2) of revenue generated. The buyers, 45% of which came from outside France, represented 34 countries.
At the official opening ceremony, Ritchie Bros. chairman Robert Murdoch said that he hoped the new site should eventually reach more than 1,700 lots per sale, and also said that in the long term, a second permanent Ritchie Bros site would be opened in France since it is one of the largest European markets. He said that it is likely that this would be located in the south of the country.
The company stipulated that the new site must meet high environmental quality requirements, going beyond the official recommendations of the DRIRE (French Regional Directorate for Industry, Research and the Environment). New ground sealing techniques were used for the first time in France. Oils and hydrocarbons that night leak from machines that is swept away by rainwater is filtered to allow clean water to pass through into drains that convey it to storage ponds.
