Opinion: Don’t let Greymouth’s wharf history end up in landfill

By Martin Thompson, Managing Director, LMA Timber. First published in the Greymouth Star, June 2026, under the headline “Saving wharf heritage”.

I’ve always believed that timber tells a story. Each plank, pile and beam carries the echoes of the people and places it has supported. So when I heard about the $8 million redevelopment of the Port of Greymouth, I was genuinely pleased. Our port deserves the investment, and the West Coast deserves modern infrastructure.

But there’s a question nobody seems to be asking: what happens to the old wharf?

The hardwood piles and planking at Richmond Quay have been standing in the Grey River for around a century. They’ve borne the weight of cargo, weathered countless storms, and stood as silent witnesses to the commerce and community life of the West Coast across generations. They are a physical testament to the resilience and ingenuity of the people who built and worked this port.

And as far as I’m aware, there is currently no plan to save any of it.

If nothing changes, the most likely outcome is that this timber ends up in landfill or burned, treated as demolition waste rather than what it actually is: a rare, irreplaceable material with decades of life left in it. Hardwood of this age and quality simply cannot be bought new. The trees it came from were slow-grown over a century or more, and the sizes and densities used in old wharf construction are no longer commercially available. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

I’ve spent my working life with timber, including reclaimed hardwood wharf timbers just like these. I’ve seen what happens when this material is recovered properly: it goes on to live again in heritage restorations, boutique builds and bespoke furniture, each piece carrying the essence of where it came from. A beam from the Greymouth wharf, given a second life in a West Coast home, isn’t waste avoided. It’s history extended.

This is what the circular economy actually looks like in practice. Not an abstract policy goal, but a deliberate choice made at the moment of demolition: deconstruct rather than demolish, salvage before the skip arrives, and ask what the material in front of us is worth before writing it off.

That choice has to be made early. Salvage isn’t something you can bolt on once the diggers arrive. It needs to be built into the deconstruction plan from the start. Which is why now, before work begins, is exactly the right time for the port company, the council and the contractors to put the question on the table: who is responsible for what happens to this timber?

The redevelopment of the port is a good news story for Greymouth, and I want to see it succeed. But success should include what we leave behind, not just what we build. The new wharf will serve this community for the next hundred years. The old one shouldn’t end its first hundred in a rubbish pile.

The West Coast has always understood the value of things built to last. Let’s prove it.

Martin Thompson is Managing Director of LMA Timber, which supplies new and reclaimed timber, including recovered hardwood wharf timbers, across New Zealand.