The dispersal sale of a herd of 950 cows, yesterday in Cork, has been described as ‘surreal’ and the experience was likened to the day after a funeral, by herd owner Peter Kingston.
Kingston, of Cradenhill farm in Co. Cork, was speaking on RTE radio following the auction of his entire Holstein-Freisian herd.
It is understood that all the stock was sold in the auction, with a significant number of the cows going to UK buyers.
“It’s a surreal experience…that everybody has experienced the day after a funeral. It’s a reality.
“You’re looking back on something that was a terrible experience for me and my family. We’re going to try cope with that and the aftermath of that as best we can.”
Speaking about the cattle, Kingston said that they had won European titles, national titles as well as local accolades.
Kingston explained that the farm was bought by his father, who kept bees and had over 100 hives. He said it was the sale of 1t honey in 1971 that helped finance the purchase of the farm.
He gathered up the money [from that sale] and he had enough money to put as a deposit on the farm and he built it up from there.
When asked how the herd done so well, Kingston said that he and father had an ambition to succeed.
“Everybody is given a talent and my father has a stock-man’s eye for quality animals. He’d be able to see it at a young age, develop it and get it to its potential.”
Borrowings
The dispersal of the herd came following a High Court ruling for ACC Bank to recover €2.4m in loans from the Kingstons.
Peter Kingston said that he felt that he’s like to do more in life than just farming, even though it was his ‘thing’ for so many years.
In order to do this, he said, he needed to expand his farm big enough to sustain employment of other people to do the work, so that he could get away.
There’s lots of farmers in this country that work night and day for their own farm and they find it difficult to have a life outside farming.
Speaking about his borrowings from ACC Bank, he said that when you examine any business [to take out a loan] you can find a figure that makes sense.
“The sense figure to me was that we wouldn’t carry any more than €5,000 per cow and that’s exactly what that figure is.
“I mean a cow costs usually about €1,500, it costs another thousand for the shed, another thousand for the milking parlour, we’re not talking about land…about €5,000 a cow should be a sustainable enough figure.”
Falling apart
Kingston said that things started to fall apart in 2008, that the banks ran scared and at that particular time ACC was refraining from giving any more borrowings, even though he said they had verbally agreed to additional borrowings.
He claimed that from the very start they were left €250,000 short for capital expenditure and that they were dragging that money around for a long time.
Speaking about the repayments on the loan, he said that they made repayments up to 2013.
“In 2013, we visited ACC again and we enquired about getting the remainder of the capital investment money we had agreed on.”
He said that they were told by the bank that maybe if they [the Kingstons] made an offer for the loan, it might be the best way out for both parties.
Kingston said he agreed with this and asked the bank at what level would they consider an offer for the loan. He claims that they said an offer of €1.2m.
“That money was rounded-up through different methods and we were in a position to complete that.”
At that particular point ACC said ‘no, we’re not interested’.
Following this, ACC took the matter of the loan through the courts and sought the judgement to recover the loans.
Kingston said that ACC Bank then got security equal to his land for the loan. “That’s all I ever booked into, I never booked into giving them personal guarantees or any guarantees over my livestock.”
“Yet the courts were quite happy to give them judgement over my livestock.”
Kingston said that he couldn’t say how much the cattle went for in the sale [as he wasn’t sure] but suggested it could be in the region of €600,000-€700,000.
He said that there wasn’t a good turn-out to buy them and that it will be known in time who bought them.
Kingston said that he does not expect to be in a position to buy his livestock and farm back.