Ritchie Bros. officially opened its new 60-acre permanent auction site in Grande Prairie with a two-day unreserved public auction on November 24 & 25. The new auction site is more than double the size of the site it replaced and features the second-largest Ritchie Bros. auction building in the world, with space for the Company’s proprietary Virtual Ramp, as well as a 30,625 square foot refurbishing facility. For the first time ever, Grande Prairie bidders could stay indoors, out of the cold, for the entire auction and see each item as it was sold: mobile equipment was driven over a ramp in front of the auction theater and photos of stationary items were projected onto a large Virtual Ramp screen.
More than 3,300 people from 23 countries registered to bid on over 2,220 items for the construction, agriculture, transportation, oilfield, mining and other industries being sold in the auction. Of the CA$41 million (US$38 million) of equipment sold, almost CA$7 million (US$7 million, 17 percent) went to bidders from outside Canada.

Posted: 12|4|09 at 9:48 am. Filed under: Auction News.