Given that it's the Daily Mail, I'll take a guess at something like this.
The machinery they sold at auction was End Of Life material, meaning it was coming towards the point of being in need of replacement. Pressed by the Governments funding cuts the decision was made to sell the machinery and lose the staff employed to operate them. This would be a saving of the wages, running costs, insurance, transport costs, storage costs, etc. for machinery which would be used infrequently over the year, but would still need to be paid up in all respects. These costs could quite easily be way more than the cost of hiring equipment as and when required. Don't forget, the money spent on hiring the stuff includes all wages, insurance, maintenance etc. and is simply the overall cost, whereas the sale of the machinery is just that.
It's just the papers making a story up out of some vague facts.
