Marlborough-based Repost has processed its millionth repurposed vineyard post, marking more than six years of diverting CCA wooden trellis posts from landfill and back into productive use.
Co-founders Greg and Dansy Coppell found vineyards break about 600,000 2.4m posts a year in Marlborough alone when harvesting machines pass through. Repost collects the broken posts, pulls out clips and nails, docks and grades them, then bundles them for sale as intermediate fencing material.
“It was an absolute crime to be sending [the posts] to landfill the way it was,” says Greg.
Posts retail from $3.25, compared with about $10 for a new post. Sheep and beef farmers are the primary customers, though the product sells through Mitre10 for smaller projects such as garden edging and retaining walls. Repost also ships nationwide and has sent posts to Vanuatu.
“It started off mainly focusing on our sheep and beef set because that’s what Greg and I are – farmers,” Dansy says. “But it’s definitely spanned out to a business much bigger than we could ever have anticipated.”
Dansy says they have grown to include brand-new wire and netting with manufacturing defects or from cancelled orders, product that would otherwise go to scrap.
With the current vineyard downturn driving redevelopment, some vineyards pulling out after 30 years are generating large volumes of 2.4m posts. Repost is processing those for on-sale, including back to other vineyards as replacement posts.
“These CCA wooden posts – the harvesting machine goes through and they’ve got perfectly good life left in them,” she says.
During flood events, Repost offers posts at $1 each to affected farmers ordering a unit load.
“We just want to see these usable posts get a second life,” Dansy says. “We don’t want to see them go to landfill.”
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