Forty totes for eleven weeks, and nothing to store in February
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Describe the problem rather than the container. Most of the useful work in these jobs happened before anyone chose a product.
Replacing forty owned IBC totes with a seasonal harvest lease cut this winery’s per-harvest container cost by 62%, from roughly $4,900 amortised to $1,870, and eliminated nine months of outdoor storage that was costing them four to six containers a year to UV degradation and freeze damage. Containers arrive food-line washed with certificates each August.
What we were given
- 45,000 case production, harvest running mid-August to early November
- Forty owned 275 gallon food-grade totes, average age six years
- Outdoor storage on gravel between seasons, uncovered
- Four to six containers replaced annually from weather damage
Four constraints
Eleven weeks of use, fifty-two weeks of ownership
The fleet was genuinely essential during crush and genuinely idle the rest of the year. Amortised across a five-year life with replacement losses, each harvest was costing about $4,900 in containers alone.
The sun was eating the fleet
Uncovered outdoor storage in Napa is harder on HDPE than in San Francisco — more sun, more heat, and occasional hard frosts. They were losing four to six containers a year, and the survivors were noticeably more brittle by year four.
Cleaning was happening in a hurry
Containers were being rinsed on site in August under time pressure, with no documentation. For a producer whose buyers increasingly ask about food-safety controls, that was becoming a commercial problem as well as a hygiene one.
Storage occupied land that could be planted
The container yard was a quarter acre of otherwise usable ground.
The solution, step by step
A forty-unit seasonal lease, August to November
Grade A food-safe stock, reserved in June, delivered the second week of August and collected in the second week of November. Priced at $44 per container per month for the harvest term.
Food-line wash and certificates on arrival
Every container arrives washed on our dedicated food line with a certificate tied to its unit number. The winery’s own HACCP documentation now references those certificates rather than an internal rinse log.
Ten units bought outright for year-round use
They genuinely needed a small standing fleet for cellar work. We sold them ten rebottled units for that, which live indoors, and leased the seasonal surge.
Priority slots rather than a queue position
Harvest dates move with the weather. The agreement gives them a two-week delivery window they can call within, rather than a fixed date they would inevitably have to change.
Their old fleet bought back
We purchased twenty-six of their forty containers at Grade B, credited against the first season’s lease, and recycled the fourteen that failed testing. That credit covered most of the first year.
Feedback
“The part I did not expect was not having a container yard any more. We had stopped seeing it as a cost because it had always been there.”
— Cellar master, Napa Valley winery
What went wrong