Encouraging farmers to consider a sustainable alternative to buying new fence posts. - Stuff NZ.

Tasman man Greg Coppell, meanwhile, was encouraging farmers to consider his sustainable alternative to buying new fence posts.

His enterprise, Repost, was re-purposing damaged vineyard posts for farm use, at half to two-thirds the price of new 1.6-metre and 1.8m posts.

Coppell, 39, said 800,000 to a million vineyard posts were snapped by harvesters (or stockpiled from re-development) every year in NZ. They were typically fractured at the bottom.

His operation, which had grown to team of 16 in the past year, cut off the broken ends, then used a hydraulic press to remove any nails, then bundled up the resized posts and sent them to farmers.

Manawatū and Wairarapa had become the biggest regions Repost served, and it had also had started processing waste from Hawke’s Bay orchards and the construction industry.

“We’re trying to get a secondary life for as much as it as possible.”

Coppell, who owns a sheep and beef station out the back of St Arnaud, near Nelson Lakes, said he was no salesman, but thankfully it didn’t seem he needed to be.

“It’s going nuts, really ... Farmers just get it, and I wouldn’t be trying to sell it to any other group of people really. They’re just easy people to explain it to and understand it.”

Read the full article here, and you can find Greg half way down the article!