| 103 New life for stockpile of broken posts Hugh de Lacy “We decided to create a process that turns as many discarded posts as possible into fence-posts and other useful resources.” RURAL SERVICES » Repost Re-cycled treated fence-posts for sheep and cattle farms at a quarter the cost of new posts? No kidding: that’s what St Arnaud’s, Marlborough, business Repost is offering – and in the process saving huge amounts of copper-chromearsenate (CCA) treated timber from being dumped in landfills. Repost’s resource of posts comes from the viticulture industry where, in Marlborough alone, no fewer than 375,000 2.4m to 2.7m long vineyard posts a year are accidentally broken off at or below ground level, and have to be replaced. Most of the damage comes from harvesting machinery, and the broken posts are generally stockpiled on the vineyard for lack of any other means other than the landfill for disposing of them. Repost was set up in 2020 by Greg Coppell, a sheep and beef farmer in Tasman’s Howard Valley, and Stu Dudley, a Marlborough viticulturist. Greg was budgeting out new fencing on his 500ha farm when he remembered that his father, Allan Coppell, had been using discarded vineyard posts as fence-posts for decades on his farms. “It was a no-brainer for us as we couldn’t afford the cost of brand new posts,” Greg says. Greg found a local vineyard only too willing for him to relieve them of its stockpile of broken posts, and he learned that there were similar stockpiles scattered throughout the wine districts of both islands, with the wine industries only too keen for a solution to be provided to this waste stream. The commercial potential of the posts to sheep and cattle farmers like himself was obvious to Greg, as it was to Stu, when Greg took the idea to him. Stu had been in the wine industry for 14 years and was well-acquainted with the problem that CCA posts were posing. “So we decided to create a process that turns as many discarded posts as possible into fence-posts and other useful resources,” Stu says. Supported by Greg’s wife Dansy and her sister Gabby, Greg and Stu set up Repost which, by early this year, had collected, re-purposed and recycled 200,000 posts. These have since helped farmers fence 1300km of horticulture and agricultural farmland, and in the process saved 1400 tonnes of CCA timber waste from going to landfill. The posts are graded, then de-nailed on-site at the host vineyard by a foot-activated hand-held machine that Greg designed and built. They’re then sawn to lengths of either 1.6m or 1.8m, half-round or quarter-round, pointed or unpointed, and sold in bundles of 50 (half-rounds) or 60 (quarter-rounds), at prices from $3.25 to $4.65 a post - roughly a quarter of the cost of new ones. A recent finalist in the Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards, Repost has a staff of seven including the four principals, runs two trucks and various support implements, and is currently capable of re-cycling up to 350,000 posts a year. Launching into a nationwide expansion this year, the company already has stockpiles of posts in Taupo and Pahiatua, and is looking at adding battens and pegs/stakes to the product list. ProudlySupportingRepost Ltd 0276610909 | reformfab@gmail.com Renner fencing yards. Adam Swanson 021 839 652 E loadngologistics@yahoo.co.nz
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