Kem Ormond, NZ Herald | 11 March, 2024
Ever wondered what happens to old vineyard posts when they are discarded?
Repost, a company based in Marlborough, has been repurposing vineyard fence posts for the past four years.
What started as a need to find a cost-effective way to source posts for 30km of stock fencing on Greg and Dansy Coppell’s 500-hectare sheep and beef breeding farm in Nelson Lakes has now turned into a thriving business.
The Coppells said their first thought was to find a quantity of discarded vineyard posts. Greg’s father Allan had been using them for decades on his farm.
They found a stockpile of posts at a Marlborough vineyard and after sorting over the pile, they returned, repurposing the broken posts into usable 1.8m and 1.6m half and quarter round posts.
They transformed their farm into usable paddocks, maximising pasture and accommodating their various stock.
With the seed sown, Greg and Dansy were keen to make this work on a larger scale and thus began Repost.
While they drive the business development and partnership opportunities, their team now consists of Stu Dudley who has been in the viticulture industry for over 15 years and Liam Garlick who streamlines freight and logistics and day-to-day site operations; the glue that binds this operation together.
With thousands of tonnes of useful durable wood being put into landfills every year from the viticulture industry, and with the viticulture industry priding itself on being sustainable and always looking at ways to lower its environmental impact, repurposing their old posts was the way to go, they said.
Since its conception, Repost has stepped up to the next level and with a tick from WorkSafe and resource consent processes in place, they are now able to process on-site.
This has made their operation smarter and more productive, they said.
They have processed more than 600,000 posts in total since they started in business, with a gradual increase each year.
They are looking to process up to 400,000 alone in this coming year and in the long term, they are hoping to include added value products such as 5×2 battens that could be used for various uses, including by DoC for its walkways.
How Repost is supporting Cyclone Gabrielle relief efforts
© Provided by NZ Herald
Repost has a crew of four who are working in Hawke’s Bay, supporting the Cyclone Gabrielle relief efforts, along with the Hawke’s Bay Silt Recovery Taskforce.
Instead of the damaged vineyard posts being sent to Whangarei to be chipped, they are turning the posts into intermediate and strainer posts, which have been donated by the taskforce to rural
communities up and down the East Coast including Otane, Pōrangahau, Pākōwhai, Esk Valley, Tutira and Wairoa.
They are working their way through some of the larger vineyards and orchards and expect to be in Hawke’s Bay for another 12 to 18 months.
### The good news
Repost says it is changing one of the viticulture industry’s largest waste issues while also introducing recycled low-cost posts for farmers. Repost has partnered with Mitre10 as a supplier of their posts.
