One of EquipNet’s largest corporate clients, Novartis is a leading global provider of healthcare solutions with a focus on the evolving needs of today’s patients.

EquipNet has worked with Novartis’s Grimsby site for several years to help manage and sell surplus assets on a continuous basis. For this project, the site requested EquipNet’s help to inventory and sell all of the equipment located in one of its temporary storage areas within six months. The equipment consisted mostly of MRO/spare parts and six high value pieces of processing equipment, meaning the majority of profit would lie in only 1% of the available equipment.

After evaluating the equipment, EquipNet recommended hosting a dedicated online auction to sell the smaller MRO pieces. We also suggested a combination of negotiated sales on our MarketPlaceTM and an additional auction for the six higher value assets. One of the challenges with this project was the fact that the warehouse was open to all Novartis employees and some of the inventoried equipment ended up being utilized by the facility prior to the auction.

The other main challenge to this project came about after the dedicated auction with arranging the post-sale logistics. There was a packaging restriction based on safety protocols, which meant that buyers could not have equipment packaged for transport at the Novartis warehouse. This resulted in some additional expenses for a few of the larger buyers who needed to transport their equipment to a local packer before shipping it to the final destination.

EquipNet’s specialists included the following services for a comprehensive solution to the client’s asset management needs.

•Project Management              •Dedicated Online Auction

•Onsite Inventory                     •Worldwide Logistics

•Individual Asset Sales

Overall, this project was a huge success by showing Novartis the value of what was in its surplus warehouse and providing much higher proceeds versus scrapping all of the equipment. In addition, we were able to make sure that the six-month deadline was met. £116,700 was made in Auction sales, while another £110,800 was made in Individual Asset Sales. Part of the success for this project came from the excellent communication with Novartis and we look forward to working on another surplus opportunity with the company in the future.