The first Tom Dant, managing director of Gill Marsh Forecourts, knew of problems at Harvest Energy was when a message came through at 12.30 on Saturday afternoon, from their head of dealer sales, saying the company could not supply them with fuel.
“When I called our Harvest area manager the first thing they said to me was if you can get fuel from elsewhere then I suggest you do that, but it’s not as easy as that because we don’t have credit with other suppliers so they need you to pay up front,” says Dant, who looks after Gill Marsh’s three forecourts.
Luckily for Dant, he left his previous supplier – Rix Petroleum – on good terms and they have stepped in to help. “Rix Petroleum still had our account open on their system and sent two tanks on Monday and one today (Wednesday) but it’s not nearly enough.”
Dant is obviously very grateful for Rix’s help in the situation but says the fuel has been supplied at a higher cost and on more detrimental terms than he is contracted to Prax with.
Gill Marsh Forecourts had been with Harvest since 2022 and had just re-signed with them, in March, for a further five years
Dant is now working hard to see whether he can get out of that contract. He contacted the PRA for advice and they said it depended whether Harvest was in liquidation or administration as liquidation would void any contract.
Dant’s sites were out of unleaded yesterday and of diesel at the weekend. There are plenty of competitors near the sites and Dant is concerned that once his customers go elsewhere for their fuel, they may not come back.
In the meantime, he is busy getting his head around ordering fuel again, something he has not done for three years because he had a VMI (vendor managed inventory) deal with Harvest where they did all the ordering for him.
“We don’t know what the long term impact is going to be, and as far as I can remember this hasn’t happened before where the fuel supplier has gone bust! We have taken some legal advice, but as it’s early days we are in limbo a bit as we cannot re-sign with someone else until we know whether the company is in administration or liquidation. “We can only rely on our old supplier for a couple of weeks as they have an allocation at the refinery and our volumes vastly outweigh it. The impact of the administration could affect a lot more jobs as if dealer sites don’t have contacts or indeed the financial standing to purchase product from elsewhere, it would not be long before they face financial problems.”
