It was a cracker of a day at the Meppem Farming clearing sale, held on July 4 at ‘Merinda’ Spring Plains Road, Narrabri.
The sun was shining and farmers and machinery enthusiasts were soaking up the joys of an onsite sale, relishing the added bonus of a social catch up while munching on the delicious barbecue kindly provided by the Narrabri Westpac Rescue Helicopter volunteers.
“It was an excellent sale, we had a great attendance of local and regional buyers,” said James Thomas of Nutrien Harcourts, Narrabri.
“With all of the major items selling and making good money on the day.
“We were very lucky with the weather and the outstanding catering of the Westpac Rescue Helicopter made it a really enjoyable day for all who attended.”
Mr Thomas said it was a special clearing sale held on behalf of Dave and Loretta Meppem.
Following 35 years of cotton growing and contributions to both the local and agricultural communities, Dave and Loretta have decided to retire and offered their complete inventory of machinery and equipment for sale.
There was something for everyone – from a piano to eskies, household furniture and of course, a quality line up of farm equipment including John Deere tractors, tillage, rowcrop, harvesting and grain equipment, irrigation supplies, fuel storage tanks, pipes, workshop and sundries.
The grain handling equipment certainly attracted some interest with the 18T Finch chaser bin making $61,000 to an AuctionsPlus bidder along with $62,000 for the 100T mother bin, said Mr Thomas.
“The row crop equipment attracted good local interest with a mixture of AuctionsPlus and onsite bidders purchasing the John Deere Tractors”.
The Courier loved the chance to cover a clearing sale onsite as much as the attendees, with many positive comments about the on-farm sale day.However, the online agricultural marketplace AuctionsPlus has been embraced by the farming community and clearing sale customers.
Mr Thomas said AuctionsPlus had live audio of the Meppem Farming sale via Paul Thomas’ phone, so online users could listen to the auction and experience the action.
“With many clients commenting that they were sitting in their tractors bidding while listening to Paul whilst bidding on their phones,” Mr Thomas added.
“Certainly, online sales seem to be the primary method these days as it helps mitigate any weather risk and logistical issues.
“However, onsite sales are always a great way to ensure a high clearance rate providing you have adequate facilities and good access.
“We have been incorporating an AuctionsPlus interface into some of our onsite sales which is essentially a hybrid of online and onsite.
“We catalogue all of the items and upload them onto the auctions plus platform.
“We sell onsite in the order they are catalogued and are able to live feed the bids onsite to AuctionsPlus and then receive the online bids back to compete with the onsite bidding in real time.
“The technology is getting better and better and it really helps broaden the buyer base for the sale.”
Nutrien Harcourts said the Meppems had enjoyed a long and successful association with the owners of ‘Merinda’, the Leitch family and were looking forward to the next stage of their lives.
Mr Thomas said Nutrien Harcourts’ were thrilled the sale was a success for the Meppem family and wanted to ‘wish them all the best with retirement and sailing adventures’.
“We have had a long association with the Meppem Family, Dave has been an asset to the Narrabri and Wee Waa farming communities and always very generous with his time and advice.”
The Courier approached Dave Meppem for comment after the sale and he said he “was really happy with the way Nutrien ran it, nothing was too much trouble – they did a really good job.
“I was really glad I pushed for an onsite as well as online just for the community aspect because we’re not social enough. The purely online world, we lose a lot. Having the combination of the two is the best of both worlds.”
