What An Industrial Depression Looks Like: Photos From An Australian Heavy-Machinery Auction
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
11/09/2015
… we said that “If Caterpillar’s Data Is Right, This Is A Global Industrial Depression.”
Today we get visual evidence of this, courtesy of an Australian heavy industrial equipment auction where machines such as a Caterpillar 992C wheel loader, which normally costs $2.9 million, can now be bought for just $15,000, a 99% discount!
As Australia’s ABC reports, now that the commodity bubble has burst for good, auctioneers are hard at work selling tens of millions of dollars of suddenly useless coal mining machinery for just a fraction of its original market value.
The reason is known: the severe downturn in the Australian resources sector (courtesy of China’s whose commodity imports are declining with every passing month) has led to a massive oversupply of equipment, and much of it is unsuitable for use in any other industry. This means unwanted excavators, trucks and sundry heavy machinery will end up as scrap, if not sold at auction.
ABC’s reporter visited just one such auction in New South Wales, which was owned by Big Rim, a mining services contractor which also collapsed after the miners it serviced also closed.
What he saw was stunning:
“At the moment we’ve probably got the worst downturn I’ve seen in 25 years,” said Chris Hassall, whose company is conducting the auction.
Peter Turner’s Gold Coast company Turner Engineering used to compete for contracts with Big Rim. “I’d be interested in at least 50 per cent of what’s here, and there are at least 100 machines here,” he said.
One of those machines was a large water tanker which Peter Turner was running the ruler over. “It’s not worth a lot. It’s worth $75,000 or something, but you can’t build the tank for that.”
The Rest…HERE
