Ritchie Bros Auctioneers conducted the largest Singapore auction in the company"s history earlier this month.

The unreserved public auction featured a range of mining and construction equipment and generated more than US$17 million in gross auction sales, beating the previous site auction of US$16 million set in March 2000.

During the one day auction 335 lots from 25 consignors were sold. The sale attracted more than 350 registered bidders from 40 countries.

Almost three-quarters of the equipment in the auction went to buyers from outside Singapore with much going to buyers from other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Australia, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea and New Caledonia, as well as the Middle East.

Ritchie Bros area manager Peter Ericson says: "Time and again interested buyers show us that they are willing to travel to participate in our unreserved auctions."

The equipment sold in the auction included 16 rock trucks, 52 articulated dump trucks, 35 hydraulic excavators and 23 crawler tractors. A range of other industrial equipment, including a stationary concrete batch plant, was also sold.

Ritchie Bros is the world's largest auctioneer of industrial equipment, operating in more than 110 locations in more than 25 countries around the world.