State-owned miner Sold Energy will put its heavy machinery from its Stockton mine on the block for an expected $6 million.
The sales includes 21 trucks, excavators and bulldozers from the mine.
Australian-based Hassalls specialises valuing and selling mining industry assets.
General manager Steve Wall said it values Solid’s Stockton fleet at $6 million. The most expensive truck was worth nearly $3m new and one of the biggest units, a dump truck, could carry 100 tonnes.
READ MORE: Solid Energy has decision “pending” on whether to close Stockton
The fleet included a rare 2010 Cat 834H Wheel Dozer, Cat Excavators, Cat Artic Trucks, Haulmax Off Highway Haul Trucks and several Cat dump trucks.
Although the sale was big by New Zealand standards, the dump truck and other vehicles was small on a world-scale.
Hassalls recently sold equipment in Queensland worth tens of millions, he said.
Solid’s vehicles, built in 2010, would start moving to Christchurch for sale about a fortnight.
Half of the vehicles were too big to pass under an overhang in the Buller Gorge so some machines would be stripped down to their chassis or have tyres removed.
The equipment would be parked at Burnside Contractors’ yard on Trices Rd in Halswell .
Wall expected buyers from Asia, Dubai, North Africa and Western Australia, but also the West Coast, where there had been a “renaissance” in demand for alluvial gold.
Hassalls previously sold vehicles for Solid Energy after it bought the Pike River coal mine, at Oceana Gold’s Macraes mine in Otago and at a Huntly coal mine in Waikato.
Solid Energy acting chief executive Tony King said the sale was being handled by banks.
