The director of the company running Carmarthen livestock market has sought to reassure farmers after reports that some have not been paid for stock sold there up to eight weeks ago.

BJP Marts Ltd operates the out of town market on a site rented from Carmarthenshire County Council.

A market hasn’t been run at Carmarthen for many weeks and some farmers say they are owed money for animals traded there in July.

Pembrokeshire livestock farmer Peter Weeks says he is owed £4,289 after two cheques for the sale of store cattle and weaned suckler calves were returned by the bank.

Mr Weeks suggests he has made repeated attempts to contact the company’s director, Jonathan Morgan, about payment but the matter had yet to be resolved.

“I was assured there would be a bank transfer to cover the amounts on the cheques that bounced but that was eight weeks ago and I still haven’t been paid,’’ said Mr Weeks, who farms in Boncath and has been a customer at Carmarthen market for 20 years.

The last advertised sale at Carmarthen was on July 3 when a monthly sale of breeding cattle, organic cattle, stock bulls and weaned calves was held.

According to Mr Morgan, he is currently in the process of restructuring the business with support from a private investor following the resignation of his co-director, Iwan Jones, earlier this year.

He insists that he had visited most of farmers who had not been paid, to explain the situation.

“I am endeavouring through the restructure to ensure they are paid as soon as possible,’’ he says.

The restructure would allow him to “take the business forward’’, he adds.

Mr Morgan suggests that the lease on the site had expired and that he was in the process of “resolving that’’ with the local authority.

“It has been a challenge, these are very big premises with onerous overheads and that is why we needed someone (private investor) on board.’’

He says he plans to get the market up and running again “as soon as possible’’.

“It doesn’t benefit anyone to have the market closed for a lengthy period, Covid has played a part in that, it has not been easy,’’.

In March 2020, a notice appeared in the Official Public Record, The Gazette, stating that the Registrar of Companies was giving notice that Bob Jones, Prytherch and Co Marts Ltd would be struck off the register and dissolved.

But the following month another notice appeared stating that the striking off action had been discontinued.

The initial notice was the result of an administrative error, says Mr Morgan.

The market was once the most strategically important livestock centre in west Wales with a buoyant trade and good road networks but numbers of livestock offered for sale have significantly fallen over a period of time.