News

Brisbane: Courier Mail, Business Section, Page 3, June 1, 2005

The article:

MILLIONS of dollars in mining, construction and farming equipment went under the hammer yesterday in Brisbane with the first local auction buy the Australian arm of a Dubai-based company.

WWA Australia chose Brisbane as their second auction base after Perth because of the activity in the mining and construction sectors, marketing director Anthony Tobin said.

"We've previously held auctions in Perth and still do and we wanted to expand into the East Coast," Mr Tobin said.

"Brisbane was the obvious choice (because) southeast Queensland is booming with all that construction work going on."

The majority of the 300 people at the auction were from southeast Queensland with bidders also travelling from Sydney and Adelaide.

The final amount from the sale of more than 500 items including excavators, crawler tractors, forklifts, buggies, generators and quad bikes had not been tallied up by late yesterday, but Mr Tobin estimated it was in the many millions.

The Dubai-based parent company WWA has held more than 40 auctions around the world in the past five years, selling more that 35,000 items with a combined value of more than $US350 million ($A463 million).