‘Pat on the back’ for repurposed posts

Otago Daily Times extract:

"I realised after poking around the vineyards doing this how big a volume it all was.

"You pick up 1000-odd posts and there’s another 90,000 there so I pitched the idea to some of the vineyards."

Initially, he put this in the too-hard basket after doing the numbers until realising he needed to charge vineyards a fee for their removal, which was much less than landfill costs.

Mr Coppell said the re-purposed posts gave farmers another option and kept new round wood operators honest.

"This is one thing in my life that has got bigger picture purpose than anything else.

"Marlborough’s landfills have probably only got half the lifespan what they plan to and are making changes there to say we are not going to accept this waste.

"That’s where we hopefully come in to get the product to farmers at a good price to get them productive as well."