RNZ: Rebuilding Hawke's Bay orchards, vineyards, one fencepost at a time

After the cyclone, Repost owner Greg Coppell took a call from the regional council asking for help. He sent his foreman north to oversee operations, and recruited more staff to start picking the posts out from massive piles of silt and debris.

"Currently in the Hawke's Bay we are sorting through wire, trees and CCA posts, plastics, sheds, and everything else you can imagine," he said.

But the 12,400 posts that had so far been spruced up and dished out were just the tip of the iceberg.

"There's hundreds of thousands of posts, [and] what we've done so far, we're pretty much only looking at two properties," he said.