The necessary moves to allow the business and assets of troubled Caledonian Marts (Stirling) Ltd to be sold to the Gilvear family have now been made.
The Gilvear brothers – John, Brian and Steven – are well-known farmers and livestock farmers in the Stirling area. Just three weeks ago they announced their intention to buy the farmer-owned market.
On Monday the business, which has been burdened in recent times by an unsustainably large debtors’ book, was put into the control of joint administrators Andrew Davison and Sam Woodward, of Ernst and Young. By Tuesday they had sold the business to the Gilvears and it had been announced that it would continue much as before at its Millhall Mart in Stirling and as operator of the Oban Livestock Group.
The new company is only to have a minor name change and will be called Caledonian Marts Ltd. The business structure and staff body will remain the same, but with a new board of directors.
The new chairman will be farmer Niall Bowser, from Argaty at Doune, with former mart operations director John Kyle becoming managing director. Other board members are to be chartered accountant Tom Preston; Fife farmer John Cameron, Balbuthie; chartered accountant John McGregor, of RA Clements Associates, Oban; former Caledonian Marts (Stirling) Ltd chairman James Cullens, of Dollarbank, Dollar; Hunter Murray, retired managing director of Lawrie and Symington, and Alexander Craig, formerly a dairy farmer at Kilmarnock. Current Cally auctioneer Alastair Logan has been appointed assistant manager of the new business.
Mr Bowser said: “Caledonian Marts is a vitally important marketing centre for all of Scotland. Competition is a wonderful thing, but in a world where farmers have so little control of product prices, it is essential to have the public forum of the live auction system to value our stock. Having two markets in Stirling makes that process even more assured.
“Looking ahead, it’s still early days but I would like to see a practical bolstering of our auctioneering staff with a view to having a much greater presence on-farm, drawing buyers and sellers to the market.
“I would like to investigate further developing specialist areas of marketing such as show cattle, native breed sales, butchers’ cattle and perhaps breeding sheep sales. Of course I would also like to see progressive increase in turnover, perhaps then with a view to some modernisation of the premises.”
There is however at this stage no word of the fall-out from the administration process of the old Caledonian Marts (Stirling) Ltd business.
A spokesman for Ernst and Young said the purchase price was confidential and he was not in a position to say how much, if anything, unsecured creditors, including the 3,000 shareholder members, would receive. In January the business had around £4million of unrecovered debt on its books although it is understood this figure had been reduced somewhat. In early March the company started paying for consigned stock by electronic bank transfer on the day of sale.