S2 Ep6: Greg and Dansy Coppell – Repost
When Greg and Dansy Coppell purchased their sheep and beef farm near Nelson they needed to do 30km of fencing on a shoestring budget – recycled vineyard posts were the ideal solution.
Soon, neighbouring farmers were asking how they could get their hands on the cheap but perfectly functional posts, and Repost was born.
Repost takes what was previously a waste product, posts ripped out of vineyards at harvest and left in piles, and repurposes them as a key on-farm input, at a fraction of the cost of a new post. A win for your back pocket, and a win for the environment.
“Repost is a processing system. In Marlborough during their mechanical harvesting, they break between half a million and a million posts, there’s nothing wrong with these posts,” Greg says.
It’s a simple model. Repost grades the posts, pull the nails, docks them and can also point them if needed, before sending them off around the country to be used for fences. This keeps the posts out of landfill, and provides a solution to the viticulture industry’s waste problem.
The posts are cheap, and have been tested and are able to stand up to the normal rigors of a fence. “They are graded and tested to make sure they are up to a brand-new industry standard of an H4. So, they are not actually second hand, they are equivalent of a brand-new post and expected to handle 50 years, minimum.”
Repost back their posts with a 35-year warranty, and Dansy says that is a conservative figure.
They are in talks to expand the business into Hawke’s Bay to aid in the Cyclone Gabrielle recovery, with both material that needs to be recycled, and plenty of fences needing to be rebuilt as a result of the cyclone.
“That’s the reason why we’re so excited about it is because the rural sector needs any bit of helping hand up there. If we do process up there it takes the freight component out of it. We hope to be helping both sectors out as quickly as we can.”
Greg was born in Takaka, Golden Bay, into a fourth-generation dairy farming family. His father sold and bought a newly converted dairy farm in Murchison, developing it the best he could. He then sold that and went to a sheep station in Ward, Marlborough.
“That’s where this post thing started, when I was a kid that was what the old man was doing, scrounging what he could to do what he could on a marginal block. She was pretty tough farming through that period.”
Greg had planned on going back to that farm, but went away to do a building apprenticeship first. When his father had a quad accident and having seen the struggles his parents had to make the farm work, Greg chose to stick with building. As a family, they decided to let the farm go.
Greg travelled overseas building, where he met Dansy, and he says building was good to him. He returned and worked on the rebuild after the Christchurch earthquake. But the yearning to farm never left him and, ultimately, building put them in a position to purchase their own farm.
“I don’t know why we do; you feel like a bit of a sucker for punishment.” At this point Dansy chimes in, it’s the lifestyle, you all love it.
“There’s a lot of emotions around it and some days you ask yourself, what are we up to? But on a good day…you pay for the privilege, but it’s a pretty great privilege.”
They moved back to Nelson, started their family and bought a farm. They were fortunate the farm owners bought into their vision to develop it and, though they were one of the lower offers, they were the successful buyers. The farm needed a lot of work, including fences. “This is how Repost came about, we really needed to fence 30km to get it to where it needed to be and that’s the seed that created Repost,” Dansy explains.
But the couple is not just motivated by the desire to develop their own property, they care about helping others, too.
“As farmers ourselves, we want to help people out there who are in a situation like we were at the beginning, so it’s been really rewarding,” Dansy says.
“To be honest there’s not a huge amount of money in it, we just genuinely want to help and I think the ag sector needs anything they can get at the moment, so we are doing the best we can,” Greg adds.
Listen to the latest episode of From the Ground Up to hear more of Greg and Dansy Coppell’s inspiring story of farm ownership, how Repost came about, and their desire to help others succeed.
Repost show notes
Website: Repost || Recycled and Repurposed Fence Posts www.repost.co.nz
Facebook: Repost Fence Posts @repostnz Repost Fence Posts | Facebook
Instagram: @repostnz Repost (@repostnz) | Instagram
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