Marts have begun tightening up on customers who have been taking a lax approach to settling bills racked up around the ring.High cattle prices have put cashflow considerations to the fore at marts, with many wary of customers pushing their luck on buying now but paying later, Eimear McGuinness of the Mart Managers Association of Ireland said.
Marts have begun tightening up on customers who have been taking a lax approach to settling bills racked up around the ring.
High cattle prices have put cashflow considerations to the fore at marts, with many wary of customers pushing their luck on buying now but paying later, Eimear McGuinness of the Mart Managers Association of Ireland said.
“Marts are collectively tightening up on the lines of credit they are extending to farmers,” McGuinness told the Irish Farmers Journal.
“When bills aren’t paid and customers have to be chased, that is where there could be problems.
“We are in the process of finding an approach within regulations that would allow us share information between marts to ensure that a customer cannot run up high bills in a number of marts before anyone knows how stretched their credit is,” she said.
“The days of writing a cheque that bounces are over.”
McGuinness noted that genuine buyers who settle up within reasonable timeframes set out by the mart are not the target of the clamp down.
Manager of Headford Mart in Co Galway Noel Considine suggested that “all marts are tightening up a bit now and we are not as free with credit as we would have been”.
“A customer could build up a €100,000 bill quite quickly in a mart at the moment with cattle prices having gone to the extreme.
“We are just definitely keeping more on top of the levels of credit taken on by customers and the mart as a whole,” he said.
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