The two receivers appointed to Co Louth’s 157.5ac Blakestown Farm have put the property up for sale with a guide price of €2.5m.

Sherry Fitzgerald has advertised the lands with an intensive feedlot come collecting yard as comprising “one of the finest” livestock and tillage farms to enter the market in the area in recent years.

The farm is located near Ardee on the Louth-Meath border and boasts 1.75km of road frontage, almost half of which lies along the N2 Dublin-Derry road. The lands have been described by the auctioneer as being of “quality fertile soil types with excellent grazing and tillage production capabilities”.

UK-based business lender Novellus Limited appointed two receivers to the farm’s company on 10 April 2024 – these receivers were named as Kieran Wallace and Andrew O’Leary, both of Interpath Advisory, Sir Jon Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2.

Blakestown Farm Ltd has been operating since 2020. Company documents show that it had run a loss of €87,800 in the year up to September 2021 on top of losses of €107,081 carried over from the previous financial year.

The 2021 accounts show that a loan of €900,000 had been taken out, which was repaid in 2023 to a creditor listed as Blakestown Capital Limited.

A further document was signed in March 2023 by Blakestown Farm Ltd’s Patrick Oliver McCabe of Blakestown, Ardee, Co Louth.

This lists Oliver McCabe as entering into a lending facility agreement with Novellus Limited for sums totalling €1,112,000, with Blakestown Farm Ltd’s lands identified as security under this agreement.

The March 2023 document also lists the farm company itself as entering into a lending agreement with the same borrower for €1,461,000.

The same lender identified as having guaranteed security over a certain amount of the borrower’s lands.

The receivers were appointed approximately one year after McCabe and the farm entered into these loans.

The McCabes are well-known Charolais breeders in Louth. Patrick Oliver McCabe’s father, Patsy McCabe, owned livestock export company Supreme Livestock and was also a car dealer in Ardee.