How a Werribee herb grower cut packaging spend and de-nesting labour with a compact folding vented half crate
A Werribee bunched-herb and salad grower.
The operator
This is a market-garden herb and salad grower in the Werribee district south-west of Melbourne, cutting parsley, coriander, spring onions and mixed leaf for a vegetable distribution loop feeding retailers and wholesalers. Their product is small, light, bunched and delicate, and it moves in high frequency at retail-pack scale rather than in big bulk bins. They came to us because their packaging was a poor fit for that profile — too big, too disposable, and too fiddly to handle on a fast line.
The problem with the old handling
Bunched herbs were going out in single-trip cartons. For a delicate, retail-scale crop that created three problems at once. The cartons were a recurring cost that added up fast across daily cuts, the boxes were oversized for small bunched product so cube was wasted, and the constant de-nesting and re-boxing of disposable cartons ate labour on a line where the team is handling many small units per hour. Rigid cartons also rode back through the distribution loop at full size, wasting return-leg space when they came back at all.
Why this product
They moved to the 15 L Folding Vented Plastic Half Crate (BPB-P3719FV): a compact 367 x 275 x 190 mm crate moulded from PP, with advanced locking handles, full venting, and a folded height of 60 mm at just 1.1 kg empty. The half-crate format is sized for exactly this crop. At 15 L and a 339 x 247 mm internal footprint it suits small bunched product without wasted cube; the venting gives gentle, ventilated handling that keeps cut herbs from heating and wilting; and the advanced locking handles let the crates stack securely through the distribution loop and speed handling on the line. Being a returnable that folds to 60 mm, it replaces the disposable carton and collapses for an efficient backhaul. It is built for Australian-Standard vegetable distribution systems, so it slots into the returnable loop the grower already feeds, and the 4,032-unit MOQ matches a fleet bought at production scale.
The rollout
They introduced the half crates across their bunched lines. The right-sized format was an immediate fit for the product, and the locking handles made stacking and line handling quicker and tidier than wrestling cartons. The team felt the labour change in the de-nesting and re-boxing they no longer had to do, and the venting kept the herbs fresher through the cold chain. On the return leg, folding to 60 mm meant the empties came back at a fraction of their erected volume.
The estimated result
These are estimates and vary with cut volume and loop discipline. On packaging cost, replacing single-trip cartons with a returnable across the season, we estimate roughly a 30% reduction in annual packaging spend. On labour, retiring the disposable-carton de-nesting and re-boxing, we estimate saving on the order of 2 hours a day on a busy line handling many small units. And on the empty-return leg, folding to 60 mm cuts the volume freighted back by an estimated two-thirds versus carting rigid boxes through the loop. For a high-frequency, retail-scale herb operation, we estimate the crates recover their cost within the early seasons and then keep returning the packaging and labour savings on every cycle.