Lüders & Partner

Lüders & Partner is a Hamburg firm of publicly appointed and sworn auctioneers and appraisers of machines, industrial plant and real estate, trading since 1954 for insolvency administrators, banks, leasing firms, investment houses and entrepreneurs. Stock comes from insolvencies and plant closures across Europe, though nearly all lots sit physically in Germany, with the occasional Austrian, French, Spanish or Italian site. Its own counters read over 2,000 auctions, over 6,000 appraisals and over 1.0 million sales, run from Hamburg plus offices in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia.

What you can buy

Sales run from a single machine to a whole works — the Dralon plant at Lingen was catalogued as a complete factory for acrylic fibre production — and the auctioneer can bundle lots into packages or offer a company's assets as one block lot.

• Metalworking and CNC: 5-axis and HSC machining centres, CNC universal drilling and milling machines, jig boring machines, cylindrical and surface grinders, wire and die-sinking EDM, Swiss-type lathes, coordinate measuring machines.
• Plastics processing: multi-component and two-component injection moulding machines, volumetric conveying and dosing units, hydraulic cooling systems.
• Printing and converting: four-colour sheetfed offset presses, gravure printing lines, cylinder engraving machines, calenders, sheet cutters, folding machines.
• Woodworking: four-sided planers, multi-blade circular saws, cross-cut and panel sizing saws, edge banding and post-processing machines, double-end profilers, wide belt sanders and CNC portal machining centres from joinery and furniture shops.
• Construction plant: telehandlers, articulated wheel loaders, construction cranes, formwork systems, stone band saws, trucks.
• Vehicles and trailers: dealership stock (Audi, BMW, Citroën, Ford, Peugeot, Škoda), semi-trailers, tipper trailers, motorhomes and caravans.
• Laboratory and medical: autoclaves, filling and homogenising equipment, ultra-low temperature freezers, ultrapure water systems, video colonoscopes, C-arm X-ray units.
• Plant infrastructure: bridge cranes, seam welding machines, degreasing and washing lines, flanging presses, pallet racking, order-picking warehouses, packaging machines, workshop tools.

How the bidding works

Nearly everything now runs on the firm's platform at auktionen.lueders-partner.com as an online auction, a private sale (Freiverkauf), or the two combined; on-site live auctions with bidding cards still stand in the terms, but the last one in the archive was October 2019. Online lots carry a starting price and often a reserve, and any bid inside the last five minutes pushes the closing time out by another five, so a lot ends only once nobody has topped it for five minutes. A private sale names a closing date, but its lots close on acceptance of a bid and are subject to prior sale, so waiting costs you the machine. Bids may also be accepted under reserve, which binds you for seven calendar days online or 48 hours at a live auction. Packages go in two rounds: the individual lots are called first, then a package bid takes the whole group if it beats the sum of those bids by at least 10 percent. Registration is open to private individuals and companies; you identify yourself with ID card or passport plus proof of address, companies add a commercial register extract and beneficial-owner details, and bidding more than EUR 5,000 in total in one auction requires a bank credit confirmation. The auctioneer may take a deposit or hold identity papers as security.

What to check before you bid

Buyer premium is 18 percent of the net hammer price unless a particular auction states otherwise, and German VAT is added to both price and premium. EU buyers pay a security equal to the German VAT rate, released once the entry certificate proving intra-community delivery reaches the auctioneer; non-EU buyers get theirs back only after handing over the original export declaration stamped by an EU border customs office, so that money sits with the auctioneer until the paperwork lands. Payment goes to the auctioneer by bank transfer, with interest above the ECB base rate running on anything late. Viewing and collection are usually by appointment at the insolvent site, and you may collect only on the dates the auctioneer names. Lots are sold as they stand with warranty entirely excluded, and every catalogue figure — year of build, dimensions, output, photographs — is declared non-binding, so the inspection appointment is your only chance to check spindle hours, control generation, tooling and whether the peripherals in the photos belong to the lot. Dismantling and transport are the buyer's cost and risk, including liability for damage to the site and repairing any access opening cut into the building — for a machining centre inside a working hall the rigging bill can beat the bid. Lot descriptions run in German and English, but the downloadable PDF catalogues, site contact and local hauliers work in German.