They "got a bit snaky" and tried to take root stock out of a chiller unit, he claimed.
Official police records show they were called at 10.43am on August 29 "to attend grape cuttings being stolen".
Two local police constables visited the property.
But they were satisfied that it was a civil, commercial matter which did not require police involvement and didn't take any personal details.
A job sheet entry by one of the police constables, seen by the Herald, says: "Both parties seemed amicable and there was no suggestion of any violence being threatened or used. It appeared to me that the owner/manager just wanted some advice on what the seller could or could not do."
The creditors reportedly got a $16,000 cheque and left.
Hours later, Lundy's wife Christine, 38, and seven-year-old daughter Amber were butchered with an axe or tomahawk inside their home at Karamea Crescent, Palmerston North.
The stunning revelations come 20 years after the murders.
The business associate – who died five years ago – was granted name suppression at Lundy's original 2002 double-murder trial.
This year the Herald applied to the High Court in Palmerston North to have the name suppression lifted, arguing that the original reasons for the judge to grant the decision were no longer relevant.
The application was opposed by the man's surviving family. Palmerston North Crown Solicitor Ben Vanderkolk took a neutral position on the Herald's application. Lundy's lawyer supported the application.
Last month, the matter was heard by Justice Rebecca Edwards. After a hearing at the High Court in Wellington she reserved her decision, which was released today.
Justice Edwards declined the Herald's application, concluding: "The public interest in publication of [the man's] name and in the evidence does not outweigh the private and public interests in maintaining the orders in these circumstances."
Auckland businessman Geoff Levick, a long-time Lundy supporter, says police failed to properly investigate the fact that creditors showed up at a close business associate of Lundy's on the day of the murders.
Levick says it was a remarkable "coincidence" that was shockingly overlooked by police.
On the afternoon the creditors showed up, the man phoned Christine who oversaw the paperwork side of Lundy's business affairs "to put her in the picture" about what had just happened.
And later that night, he also phoned Lundy - who said he was away in Wellington on business - and they spoke for 27 minutes.
"The subjects we discussed would have been the events that took place on our property that particular day…" the man said during the 2002 trial.
Asked if the conversation related to a scheme to cover up the murders, he replied: "No, definitely not."
Christine and Amber Lundy were murdered that night.
The two creditors were later questioned by police probing the double murder, the Herald understands, but the line of inquiry wasn't pursued any further.
The business associate was, however, formally interviewed several times by homicide police investigating the Lundy murders.
He was also treated as a suspect in the killings.
During one police video interview, the man noticed his name written on a document headed, 'Suspect in Murder' and "wondered what was going on".
He told Lundy's original trial that on November 26, 2000, he was visited at home by two senior police officers, including Detective Senior Sergeant Ross Grantham, the man in charge of Operation Winter as the Lundy case was dubbed.
They were "quite irate. Maybe nor irate, but very disturbed", he said, that he hadn't returned to the police station for another video interview.
"And they accused me at that stage of telling nothing but lies to the police, at which I got a little agitated and I asked them not too politely to leave," he told the court.
The man claimed that he was offered a deal by police for his co-operation in the case.
"Mr Grantham offered me immunity from prosecution," he said.
"He was only going to offer it to me once because he believed I was involved in some way, shape or form, with the killings of Christine and Amber.
"I told him I didn't want immunity from prosecution because I was in no way, shape or form, or time, or place, or anything involved with their murders."
During the 2002 trial, it was suggested that someone cleaned up the bloody scene after the slayings and switched off the Lundys' computer.
The man claimed that police accused him of the clean-up job.
He also gave a statement for Lundy's retrial at the High Court in Wellington in 2015 – ordered by the Privy Council in London, who had concerns over Lundy's first trial where he was found guilty and jailed for life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years – later uplifted to a minimum of 20 years.
He again alleged that Grantham had offered him "immunity from prosecution" even though he was accused of "cleaning up the scene and switching the computer off after the murders".
Lundy – now aged 63 – has always professed his innocence and becomes eligible for parole in 2022.
