Our Story

Greg and Dansy Coppell needed 30km of stock fencing for our 500-hectare sheep and beef breeding farm in the Howard Valley on a tight budget. Our first thought was to look for discarded vineyard posts as my dad Allan had been using them for decades on his farms.

We found a stockpile of posts at a local vineyard in Marlborough and spent days picking over the pile and loaded up the truck, returning to the farm to repurpose the broken 2.4 vineyard posts into 1.8 and 1.6 m half and quarter rounds – it was tiresome but rewarding work.

The posts are used on the steep hill country, rolling and river flats of the farm and they work well across all terrains; rocky, granite and clay soils. The posts helped to completely redesign the farm’s paddocks, maximising pasture use and accommodating all stock classes.

Dansy and Greg were keen to see if there was a way to make this work on a bigger scale, particularly as we knew the viticulture industry dispose of 1000’s of tonnes of useful durable wood in to New Zealand’s landfills every year. A mutual friend put me in touch with Stu, viticulturalist for Villa Maria, to discuss if the vineyard was interested in repurposing their waste wood into fence posts.

Stu has been in the viticulture industry for 15 years and has been lucky enough to be involved in moving several vineyards to organics, as well as being part of company and industry level discussions around sustainability. He knows that the viticulture industry prides itself on being sustainable and is always looking for ways to lower their environmental impact.

We very quickly realised this was a solvable issue with a bit of Kiwi ingenuity; and that together we’d make a great team – REPOST was born. Stu’s knowledge and passion for the viticulture industry, sustainability and understanding of CCA timber waste issues is coupled with Greg’s knowledge of resilient farming as well as an innovative problem solving ability. And at the start of 2023’ General Manager Liam Garlick came onboard streamlining freight logistics and day to day site operations and Dansy Coppell came on-board to spearhead business development and new partnership opportunities.

A perfect team to synergise two major sectors into a circular economy for the better; Viticulture and Agriculture.

We’re excited REPOST is changing one of the viticulture industries largest waste issues and creating valuable recycled low-cost resources for Kiwis too. Being resourceful is second nature to Kiwis and the team hope REPOST’s sustainable fence posts makes as much sense to you as it does to them.

Cheers,

Greg & Dansy Coppell, Stu Dudley and Liam Garlick