2 minute read
Good Stuff - Repost
Good Stuff
From vineyard waste to farm fence lines
SOPHIE PREECE
A MARLBOROUGH business is turning one industry’s Stu Dudley, left, and Greg Coppell problem into another’s solution, one pile of posts at a time. Repost is the brainchild of Greg Coppell, who started repurposing broken vineyard posts into cost effective fence “Obviously, it’s a business, lines for his Nelson Lakes farm two years ago. Seeing the burgeoning need for fenceposts, including but we genuinely want to for the protection of waterways, and recognising the growing issue being faced by vineyards stockpiling broken solve this issue.” posts, Greg “joined the dots”, says business partner Stu Stu Dudley Dudley. “Handling them individually is quite difficult. We were trying to find an easier way to make it happen.” The vineyard posts are treated with copper, chromium and arsenic (CCA) to ensure they are long life. But they are frequently damaged by harvesters or wind, and break off at the ground, with a recently released vineyard post guideline indicating that 2% to 5%, or 11 to 29 posts per hectare, are because they are treated, they can only be disposed of at landfill or stockpiled on site, and the piles are “growing and growing”, says Stu. He was viticulturist at Villa Maria when the two men discussed the opportunity of taking on the post problem in an organised way. Stu notes that farmers do occasionally get in touch with growers, as Greg did originally, before taking a small trailer full of posts away, but “the ad hoc solution wasn’t working”. They went on to transform nearly 20,000 posts from Villa Maria’s Marlborough vineyards, removing the clips, cutting them down to the 1.8metre fencepost height for sale, then taking the remaining broken ends to landfill. Stu says they are working on finding a different solution for the waste ends, but about 75% of the post is now being recycled, while vineyards and farmers get a win. They are also looking for a solution to using half and full vineyard posts, rather than just the quarter posts being reused now. “Obviously, it’s a business, but we genuinely want to solve this issue.” In recent months, the Repost duo have developed a portable post plant, with a 20 foot container that goes to a vineyard site, where it removes clips and cuts the post to size, leaving the site clear of posts and waste. It’s a simple solution for the problem, says Stu. “Greg has been working on this for two years and in the past six month there’s been a lot of refinement.” He thinks there’ll be no shortage of vineyard operators wanting the easy and cost-effective solution to their post problems, but the business also needs to build a market for the posts. “We think essentially, with all the waterway regulations and the quality and affordability of the posts, there will be quite a lot of demand.” repost.co.nz @repostnz
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