Cashel Mart Livestock & Property Sales deals with agricultural sales, farm sales, machinery sales, commercial sales, livestock valuations and grazing and tillage letting. Alison De Vere Hunt is the mart manager at Cashel and told Irish Tractor & Agri all about the business and what they’ve been up to as of late.
Cashel Mart in Co Tipperary has been in operation for almost half a century under the De Vere Hunt family and its manager Alison De Vere Hunt has been involved with the business most of her working life.
Situated behind the Rock of Cashel, the mart has built up a strong customer base throughout the Munster and Leinster region, offering its clientele sales by auction, public tender and private treaty.
Alison and her brother Robert have been jointly running the mart together over the past four years, with the former’s interest in the industry having been originally sparked by Livestock Marts after she’d finished travelling and her university studies.
Right now Alison and her colleagues are as busy as they’ve ever been at Cashel Mart, but she was good enough to take the time and explain to Irish Tractor & Agri what the business is all about.
“The mart is in the family since 1968 and I would have started here fulltime in 2010. My brother Robert and I took over the running of it in 2013,” Alison outlined.
“Right now we have 22 staff in the busy periods and we are open six days a week, with our dairy sales on a Thursday in the Spring. We’d also have machinery sales, evaluations – a bit of everything really!
“The mart has been in the family for three generations now. My grandfather bought the mart and then my father took it over from him and now Robert and I are at the helm. Hopefully, there’ll be a fourth generation coming into it in years to come!”
Farming around the Cashel area is undoubtedly in the De Vere Hunts’ DNA at this stage and Alison can recall some of her fondest memories being the ones she spent at her family’s mart as a child.
Meeting the mart’s customers and delivering a quality service is what she focuses on most now, with approximately 30,000 stock passing through the ring at Cashel Mart each year.
They hold a livestock sale of cattle, weanlings and some special entries every Saturday at present and the calf sale is on a Saturday morning in spring and into the summer. There is live sheep weighing for the factory every Monday at the mart which is based on the Camas Road in Cashel.
Spring and autumn are the most hectic for Alison and her colleagues at Cashel Mart, the summer is a very popular time for property sales and she’s delighted to see so many customers coming through the gates from all throughout the country.
“It’s been very, very busy lately. Usually cattle sales would quieten down a bit in the summer but this summer has seen our sales remain busy and a powerful trade.”
“We’re right bang in the middle of the country really and we’d have farmers coming here from Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Offaly, Laois, Waterford – all over, to be honest.
“Business is very good, thankfully. We’ll probably put around 30,000 cattle through our ring this year and that’s quite good for a mart with just the one ring.
“We don’t have a canteen as such but Brosnan’s the local pub is just around the corner from here and they look after the customers very well up there.”
Indeed the customer’s satisfaction remains top priority at Cashel Mart and Alison feels that the personal touch offered there has been salient to its success.
During her third level education, Alison obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, a Master’s in Business and Entrepreneurship before going on to undertake a Master’s in Real Estate from DIT, so it’s safe to say she’s familiar with business and customer satisfaction.
Nonetheless, the Cashel-born woman would have had to learn the ropes of her family’s business through her father, which she willingly did alongside her brother.
Together they run a busy mart of a fairly modest size and Alison believes that it’s part of the secret to its success.
“We’re small. We know all of our customers and they know us,” she said.
“It’s a great day out for them and there’s definitely an element of us knowing everyone that comes in through the gates. That’s definitely one of our strong points.
“Our location is another strong point for us and also the fact that we work hard here to make everything happen. We don’t like to see stock going home.
“We’re always working on improving the site here as well and we speak to our customers on a regular basis in trying to do so.”
In August, Alison took part in an event in Mount Mellerary, Co Waterford in a bid to make history as a part of an all-female silage cutting team.
It saw a crew of 42 women, which were known as ‘The Grass Gals’, harvest 30 acres of silage with proceeds from the event going to the Alzheimer Society of Ireland.
“A customer of ours John O’ Brien approached me to drive a tractor for it and I said I would,” Alison said of the world record-setting event. “It was such a great event to be part of and it was great to meet such a super bunch of girls who are so capable.”
“It’s a fundraiser for Alzheimers disease and there’s girls came from all over to do it – from Wales and all – so I said I would.”
Also in August, Cashel Mart introduced a new booking in system for the cattle sales with all cattle being booked into the office by 1pm on a Friday where lots will be drawn after lunch.
Farmers will be notified on a Friday after the draw of their position in the sale and there will be a weanling draw and a cattle draw.
This system has been put in place for a trial basis and if anyone wishing to discuss this matter do not hesitate to contact the office or Management of Cashel Mart (phone number listed above).
Cashel Livestock and Property Sales
Camas Road,
Cashel,
Co Tipperary
Tel: 062 62500
Web: cashelmart.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 5 No 7, October/November 2017
Cashel Livestock and Property Sales
