Landfill to be pipped at the post by new Blenheim Future Post factory

The next time you buy a loaf of bread, its plastic bag could end up on a vineyard.

That’s the hope anyway for Future Post – a company that turns plastic into posts, that plans to more than double its output with the opening of a new factory in Blenheim on Friday.

Hassan Wong, Future Post general manager, said the Waiuku-based company processed 1800 tonnes of recycled plastic in the last 12 months to make their products, but that figure was likely to jump to over 4000 tonnes per year with the addition of the new factory, at the former Timberlink site in Burleigh.

And as the country’s largest wine producing region, Marlborough used a lot of posts, which Wong said made Blenheim the perfect place to make them.

“There isn’t a better place for a plastic post producing company than right here in Marlborough,” he said.

Unlike a wooden post, the plastic version was almost guaranteed not to break, which Wong said could cut down the region’s annual vineyard waste.

“There’s over half a million wooden vineyard posts that get broken every year here in Marlborough … CCA treated posts, because you can’t burn them, and you can’t bury them, there are piles of them on every single vineyard that they don’t know what to do with,” Wong said.

“Every day, I think there is more and more potential for us to do good, use more plastic waste and keep it out of the environment.”

Future Post National sales and accounts manager Diana Jamieson said a single 125mm by 1.8m post contained the equivalent of about 320 milk bottles and 1200 bread bags’ worth of recycled plastic.

She said the new factory meant Marlborough customers would be paying less in freight costs, with posts available on their doorstep rather than needing to be shipped from Auckland.

“Probably in the last couple of years, we’ve sort of mooted coming to the South Island, and then I guess the vineyard posts have taken off,” she said.

The arrival of Future Post in Marlborough also helped to re-establish the Soft Plastic Recycling Scheme (SPRS) in the top of the South, as collected bags and wrappers now had a local end destination.

“We have been working on restarting collections in the region for some time, and the upcoming opening of Future Post’s new plant has helped this happen,” said Rob Langford, chief executive of The Packaging Forum, operator of SPRS.

“In the past, growth of the scheme was limited by our onshore processing capacity as we only collect what we can process and recycle; however, Future Post expanding into the South Island has meant an increase in its production capabilities, and therefore we have been able to add more collection points.”

Soft plastic recycling bins could be found at Countdown Blenheim, Countdown Redwoodtown, The Warehouse Blenheim, New World Blenheim, and the Marlborough Hazardous Waste Centre.