Vineyard posts repurposed for farms
INNOVATION: Couple find a cost-effective, and green, way to source posts, writes Kem Ormond.
Ever wondered what happens to old vineyard posts when they are discarded?
Repost, a firm 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 500ha sheep and beef breeding farm in Nelson Lakes has now turned into a thriving business.
Their first thought was to find a quantity of discarded vineyard posts which Greg’s father Allan had been using 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, and completely transformed their farm into usable paddocks, maximising pasture and accommodating their stock.
With the seed sown, the Coppells 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.
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 their environmental impact, repurposing their old posts was the way to go.
With a tick from Worksafe and resource consent processes in place, Repost has stepped up and is now able to process on site.
It has now processed more than 600,000 posts, gradually increasing e each year.
It is looking to process up 400,000 alone in this coming year and, in the long term, is hoping to include added value products such as 5x2 battens that, among other uses, could be incorporated into Department of Conservation walkways.
Repost has a crew of four 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.
For more on posts repurposed by Repost, visit www.repost.co.nz