News

Fleet goes under Hammer.

Paul Cooper, Operations Director, CJM Asset Management

A fleet of commercial vehicles is to go under the auctioneer’s hammer in Scunthorpe next week following the collapse of a Cleethorpes company.

Unifab Engineering Limited . . . engineers to the food industry . . . went into liquidation earlier this year after hitting difficulties in a shrinking and increasingly competitive market.

The firm’s fleet of vans, pick-ups and other vehicles has now been despatched to industrial auctioneers CJM Asset Management for disposal. They’ll be sold at an auction at the firm’s saleroom on Brigg Road in Scunthorpe on Tuesday.

CJM director Paul Cooper said: “We’ve been sent a dozen vehicles, many of them with 02 plates and all of them appearing well maintained and in pretty smart condition.”

“It is without doubt the best fleet of commercial vehicles we’ve had for sale here for a very long time. The star lots are two crew-cab pick-ups, a Toyota Hilux and a Mitsubishi L200, that we are expecting to attract a lot of interest and which will probably sell for £4,000 - £6,000 apiece.”

“The two-seater pick-ups and the Sprinter vans will make in the £1,000 - £3,000 range.”

On the less glamorous side of things the vehicles section of the sale also includes a boy racer’s pride and joy . . . seized by bailiffs.

Paul said: “It’s a Mitsubishi Galant V6-24 with dragons on the bonnet and down the sides. It has all the essential extras including alloy wheels, tinted windows, bonnet mounted air scoop and giant rear spoiler. No expense was spared . . . but sadly he didn’t get around to paying his council tax.”

It is to go under the hammer with no reserve and is expected to make only £200-£300.

The auction also includes a number of items of heavy engineering equipment from the Unifab workshops including a range of lathes, guillotines and milling machines. The most valuable item – and the most valuable thing in the sale – is a Guifil PE60 press brake, a three metre by sixty tonne machine used for bending sheet steel. The pre-auction valuation is £4,000-£5,000.

The sale also includes the remnants of the equipment of Swan Plant Services, a large national grounds maintenance and tools hire company that has now gone into liquidation. Most of the firm’s kit was auctioned at the last CJM monthly sale, which established a new record for the Scunthorpe saleroom when it achieved a total of just under £200,000.

Tuesday will see further items of equipment sent from the firm’s Newcastle depot sold off including a Major gang mower with a three metre cut, a front loader bucket for a John Deere tractor and various lawnmowers, strimmers and hedge cutters.

In all the auction extends to 550 lots. The public viewing sessions for the auction are on Monday (8th May) 1pm-7pm and on Tuesday morning from 8.30am until the start of the sale at 10 am. The vehicles are to be sold at Noon. Catalogues are available from CJM or can be downloaded free of charge from the firm’s website: www.cjmasset.com

David Newman - Newman Walker Associates, 3rd May 2006