About
Direct Concrete is one owner, one phone number and a truck full of electric saws. This is where it came from and what it runs on.
Matt Reweti, owner and operator
If you can't go under it, over it or around it, ring us to go through it.
Matt was a qualified carpenter working in commercial construction when he noticed something odd. The concrete crews on his sites were hiring a saw for a couple of hundred dollars a weekend, on a machine that cost a few thousand to buy. So he went looking for a saw to rent out to them.
He found one on TradeMe, cheaper than he had budgeted for. Then the crew told him to stop mucking about with hire and just do the cutting himself. That is the whole origin story: a saw bought to rent out, a crew who wanted the operator instead, and it snowballed from there.
He still answers his own phone. If you ring the number on this site during the day and it goes unanswered, he is under a saw, and he will text you back.
Matt RewetiOwner, Direct Concrete
Since when
We have been cutting concrete since 2016 and running Direct Concrete since 2021.
The trade came first and the business came second. Years of commercial cutting under someone else's name, then a year of residential work in the evenings and weekends, then the jump: first saw bought, business registered, and the day job left behind.
Since then the work has run from house slabs and driveways up through workshop floors and factory drainage to some of the largest builds in South Canterbury. The legal entity is Direct Concrete & Hire Limited. Everyone calls it Direct Concrete.
Five things that have not changed
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We turn up when a crew is stuck
Almost every call we get is the same call. Somebody has dug into concrete they were not expecting, six people have stopped, and the cost of waiting is a lot more than the cost of the cut. So we answer the phone, we say plainly whether we can be there, and then we are there.
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We do the small jobs
One hole, one cut, one afternoon. Turning small work away is how you lose the big work eighteen months later, and we watched a much larger company learn that the hard way before this business existed.
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We bring kit the big players do not
High frequency electric saws instead of petrol, a road saw that takes 340 mm in one pass, cores from 20 to 350 mm, and a line pump that reaches 100 m from where the truck can park.
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We control the dust
Extraction at the blade, wet cutting, a slurry vac to catch what wet cutting makes. Silica is the hazard that defines this trade and it is not a cleaning problem, it is a design problem.
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We never lead on price
We have never competed on price and we are not about to start. A race to the bottom does not end anywhere either of us wants to be, and the cheapest cut in the region is not the one you want under your slab.
Do all the small and the big stuff comes. And it's just always worked.
Matt Reweti
Why the gear matters
We run high frequency electric saws rather than petrol. They take three phase 400 volt power through an inverter, and the hand saw weighs around 13 kg, which is about half what a petrol saw weighs. On site that means an operator who is not fighting the tool by the third hour of a cut.
Indoors it means more than that. No petrol saws means no engine fumes in a building somebody is working in, and electric gear pairs properly with dust extraction at the blade. Clients comment on it often enough that we have stopped being surprised.
The rest of the truck: a road saw that takes 340 mm in a single pass, wall sawing to 220 mm from one side and 440 mm cutting from both, core barrels from 20 to 350 mm with extensions for the deep ones, a concrete scanner, breakers, and a line pump that reaches 100 m from wherever the truck can get to.
I just love coming onto these sites and solving people's problems.
Matt Reweti
Compliance, quality, speed. In that order on a commercial site.
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Compliance
Dust extracted at the blade, health monitoring on the operator, and the paperwork in your hand before we start.
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Quality
Cut straight, cut once. From small jobs to $60 million projects, we perform at the highest standard.
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Speed
Speed is key. We do not waste time on site, and we always turn up when we say we will.
Jobs we can show you
Slot drain network extension on a live factory floor
Cutting, breaking out and rebuilding a slot drain network while the factory kept running, tying into live drains under a fixed handover date.
Doorway cut out of an interior concrete wall
Vertical and horizontal pre cuts with the hand saw, then the hydraulic saw to finish, inside an occupied building with the area sheeted and cleaned.
Attic window cut through 400 mm heritage stone
A new attic window and lintel slot cut through 400 mm of heritage stone, with the interior protected from water and debris throughout.
Timaru out to the Mackenzie
- Timaru Our base
- Temuka 15 min from Timaru
- Geraldine 35 min from Timaru
- Ashburton 75 min from Timaru
- Twizel 150 min from Timaru
We also work across Canterbury, North Otago and the Mackenzie. If the job is worth the drive, we will drive it.
Want to talk to the person who does the work?
There is only one number and it is his. Tell us what you have got and where it is, and you will get a straight answer about when we can be there.