A livestock farmer pricing a fencing project asked The Farming Forum whether £158 each was the going rate for steel strainer posts, and whether a £1,755 petrol post driver beat the eBay alternative. Two months of replies mapped a fencing market in transition: steel intermediate posts are no longer the argument, and the contest has moved to strainers, clips, drivers, rival post systems and grant small print.
By TFF News | 13 November 2026 | Livestock
The conversation ran from 24 January to 26 March 2026 in the forum’s Livestock & Forage section and drew 143 visible contributions, 7,112 views and 196 reactions, an average of 1.37 reactions per contribution, with activity peaking on the opening day. As with any forum conversation, the figures describe this discussion only; they are not a representative survey of UK farmers or of the fencing trade.
The posts have stopped being the argument
Little of the conversation debated whether steel posts work; the accounts came in metres and years. One contributor reported, “Have put up about 9000 metres of clipex.” and later added, “Been in 5 years now and I’d class it as fence and forget.” Another was blunter still: “Done miles of Clipex and love it. I use creo or Dura strainers and standard posts every 3.5-4.5m depending on field.”
A hill farmer roughly twenty thousand metres in wrote, “Could not contemplate putting in posts any other way now. Can walk with petrol knocker making no mess and needing no second body in a tractor”. The never-again sentiment extended to timber components generally: “I wouldn’t use wooden strainers ever again.” from one contributor, and “Won’t use wooden deer posts ever again.” from another running deer fencing.
The caveat came from cattle country: “Cattle rubbed up against ours and bent half a dozen posts”, and another runs an electrified top wire wherever cattle can reach a steel fence: proven for sheep, still a question mark where heavy stock rub.
Strainers are where the money leaks
The opener’s £158-a-strainer quote set the tone: “I have been given a price for corner posts/ strainers @ £158 each. This seems a lot is that price right ?” The room’s near-unanimous answer: buy the steel intermediates, improvise the strainers. “As for strainers and corner posts, I just use telegraph poles. Certainly cheaper than clipper strainers……… even by using crash barriers will be cheaper.” wrote an early reply. Railway sleepers, box beams, concrete and cut-down crash barriers all followed.
Some built their own: “I made strainers out of 90mm galv pipe and stays from 60mm galv pipe worked out about a quarter of the price than the clipex stuff.” Another costed the scaffold route: “New scaffold tube about £1/ foot, so a 8ft tube is very competitive with creo timber strut.” That is a large slice of each fencing bill walking away from branded end assemblies to telegraph pole merchants and steel stockholders.
The price argument has moved on
The sharpest exchange was over the comparison itself. One experienced fencer challenged the headline pitch: “I’m sorry but the ‘less posts’ is nothing more than good marketing to make the price look more competitive when decent posts were half the price of Clipex.” His conclusion was telling for timber suppliers: “Now those decent timber posts cost as much as Clipex, there’s nothing in it cost wise of course.”
Numbers in the conversation agree: “A standard post is about £8, additional discount if buying in bulk. Cheaper than a decent creosote post the same length.” One contributor reported creosote seconds at £4 a post, and was reminded a bare price means little without length and treatment behind it. Buying intent ran throughout: “How much do clipex posts cost assuming I’ll need 5-600?”
Rivals are aiming at the clip
The incumbent no longer has the steel post conversation to itself. Contributors compared QuickClip, Perry, Hampton and Fetra posts, and noted that wire manufacturer Tornado now markets its own Clipex range alongside a steel strainer system, which the company has promoted as a complete metal fencing system since 2024.
Of the Perry post, a contributor who handled one at LAMMA judged, “Perry posts are also forged in one piece not seem welded like clipex.” The battleground, though, is netting compatibility. The same contributor set out how the incumbent built its position: “When McVeigh first introduced their clipex post it tied you to use X fence only also available to buy from them. It’s good marketing really, as the spacing is considerably different to the norm.” Challenger posts that take a wider range of netting appeal precisely because they loosen that tie, and more than one contributor called unusual clip spacing a turn-off. Wire spacing is quietly becoming the sector’s lock-in argument.
A kit market has grown around the post
The hardware questions were just as commercially pointed. “Any suggestions on the most sensible petrol driven banger for clipex posts seams a massive rang from £500-2500. Only putting in 500-750 post a year” asked one contributor. Answers spanned the market: generic marketplace drivers at a few hundred pounds that owners said had driven thousands of posts, a sub-£500 Portek, a Sealey two-stroke near £500, and Australian-built Christie machines at the premium end. One sceptic had “not been impressed with petrol knockers….saw one at show….bloke hammered away…stepped back…post fell over”, and some still push posts in with a loader or hand driver.
Accessories are shifting too, with quick-fit end clips displacing older tensioning hardware: “They are certainly easier to use and, IMO, both better and cheaper than T Clips.” said one twelve-month user, while another reported, “Those clips are brilliant, we’ve pulled up a fair bit of HT net using 2x boundary chain strainers and 2x boards, those clips have been absolutely fine” at around 40p each.
Grant small print, and a new thing worth stealing
Grant rules ran as an undercurrent. One contributor insisted, “I can assure you, that you can’t hard staple anything. It hasn’t been allowed for the last 20 years if you intend to meet the British standard which governs grant payments.” The official position is close: the current FG2 sheep netting item, paying £7.47 per metre under Capital Grants in England, says wire must not be hard stapled to intermediate posts and should be a running fit, while listing British Standards compliance as advice rather than a payment requirement. The opener’s frustration was the paywalled standard itself: “BS is mentioned when you get a grant agreement though, BS 1722 I presume, which is 36 page document costing either side of £250.”
A late twist underlined how far steel fencing has travelled: “Just heard abut a farm that had 400m of clipex posts stolen last night. all posts taken and 3 strand electric wire left…..” reported one contributor. Others doubted the economics, putting the haul in the hundreds of pounds, but posts that can be pulled and re-driven are evidently now worth carrying off, a back-handed market verdict of its own.
The question the trade is left with
On this evidence the steel intermediate post has crossed from challenger to default on a meaningful share of livestock farms, with a 30-year life widely repeated. The terms behind that figure matter: the supplier’s published guarantee applies to systems built with its heavier posts and specified netting and wire, not to any post in any fence. What nobody defended was the price of branded steel end assemblies. Farmers here will pay £8 a post and £500 for a driver, then improvise strainers from telegraph poles and scaffold tube. The first supplier to land a steel strainer assembly at a price the room would not bother working around takes a market that already exists.
Read the source conversation and analysis
Read the full conversation on The Farming Forum here. A nine-slide analysis with theme, sentiment and contributor breakdowns is available as a PDF: download the conversation analysis deck.
This conversation had been viewed 7,112 times on The Farming Forum when counted on 13 November 2026. Want your brand in the room when farmers talk livestock? Book advertising with Agri Web Media.