LENNOX, S.D. — Return better than it was given and leave it better than it was left is the motto by which ZahnTech operates. The company turns plastic waste into durable fence posts.
“(We are) making a difference, actually doing something with the plastic,” said Dan Elliott, head of marketing and sales at ZahnTech.
ZahnTech is currently on its fourth generation of fence posts. The second-generation fence post was strength tested and found to be around 10 times stronger than wood and lasts about 20 times longer, Elliott said.
“The great thing about it is it’s plastic, so you won’t need any extra insulation,” Elliott said. “If you are trying to wire it up you can screw right through it. You don’t need to have any more accessories or any more rigging for the electric.”
The company is planning on having a strength test done on their current model through South Dakota State University. Elliot said a common question farmers ask is whether their cows can push the posts over.
“We want to have hard data from a civil engineering department,” Elliott said. “We believe (it) is going to be even stronger.”
The journey from waste to a fence post begins by grinding down plastic, which then goes through different temperature processes to shape it into a post.
“It’s kind of like the secret sauce,” Elliott said.
They offer fence posts in round and square options in various widths and lengths.
Elliott said they estimate there are 16,000 water bottles or 680 milk jugs in one 4-inch fence post.
“We are getting plastic right now from places all over the country,” Elliott said.
A lot of the landfills in their area are getting full and have expiration dates of when they are going to be at full capacity.
“You go to a landfill on a windy day and look in their fencing that’s all you’ll see is bags all over the trees and in the fences,” Elliott said. “That’s the kind of stuff we have bales and bales and bales that we use in our mix.”
The company pays nothing for the plastic they use. The company takes donations from landfills and individuals.
ZahnTech was founded by Avery Zahn who had a company that used plastic piping. When he sold that company, he had extra materials left over. The company got its initial start four years ago. One day Zahn’s horse had pushed over their railroad tie fencing. Zahn thought he should make a better fence and his dad suggested using the left-over piping materials to do so.
Zahn did research and development and was able to come up with a way to extrude different types of plastic for his fence post formula. This extrusion utilizes a large variety of plastics.
ZahnTech mostly does the processing of the materials, since they don’t have a fleet of trucks for picking up the plastic.
Elliott said there is a new cattle yard that is using their fence post. The yard was struggling with wood posts, so they decided to switch to their fence posts.
“It’s exciting to see,” Elliott said. “Once people see it and see the durability and the strength of it there’s no going back.”
They plan to expand to different sizes of posts in the future. Elliott said they would like to go up to railroad tie size, which is eight-by-eight.
“Our end goal is to start putting up plants all over the country,” Elliott said. “We want to get into different construction-grade materials too.”
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