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 Hawke’s Bay we are sorting through wire, trees and CCA posts, plastics, sheds, and everything else you can imagine,” Coppell 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.
“There’s a hell of a lot more work to do, and with the uncertainty at the moment around funding, everybody’s in limbo and feeling quite anxious about what the future holds really.”
That funding was from the government, and went to the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council silt recovery and waste taskforce (which then funded Repost).
It had so far received $130 million - but the job was only half done, and there was no guarantee of more money.
Coppell was adamant the work had to continue.
“It definitely wasn’t part of our plan or model, but it’s really rewarding and we’re really pleased to be there. We’re doing our best, that’s for sure.”
And Hawke’s Bay farmers were thankful.
Otāne farmer Andrew Wilson lost all 5km of his fencing during the cyclone.
“I had no fences, no boundary fences, no floodgates, so I had to sell all my livestock,” Wilson said.
“Federated Farmers turned up with a tractor and four guys and some volunteers and did my boundary fences, which was massive, because it sort of got me going.
“You could see an end, you could see it would get cleaned up.”
After that, he became a ‘depot’ for the Repost recycled posts - they were delivered to his farm, where other farmers could come and collect them.
“We had farmers come in who’ve got say 400 hectares up the coast, and they’ve lost 45 or 50 hectares in slips,” he said.
“They can’t put the fences back where they were because the slips are there and they’re still moving.”
Traditional fencing was about $20,000 per kilometre so the money was “enormous”, he said.
“They’ve been saying to me look, it’s such a blessing to get these posts.”
There were sustainability benefits, too, taskforce lead Darren de Klerk said.
“The taskforce’s partnership with Repost has given us the ability to repurpose these posts into sustainable fencing to be reused in the community here.
“It’s great to see the amount of useful wood we’ve been able to redirect from landfill.”
It also cut costs, he said - it was about $4.50 for Repost’s work, versus about $19 to dispose one post at landfill.
