Potato storage bins: the complete Australian guide

A potato is still alive when it goes in the bin — curing, respiring and losing water for the whole storage season. The container you cure and hold it in is not a detail: it decides whether conditioned air reaches the centre of the stack or stops at the outer skin. This is the complete guide to potato storage bins for Australian operations — how curing works, what airflow and temperature the crop needs, how many kilograms fit each bin, how bins behave in a CA or forced-air room, how high you can safely stack, and how to keep the bins clean between seasons.

What actually happens to a potato in storage?

Four things happen, in sequence, and good storage manages each: the tuber cures (heals its skin), then cools down, then holds dormant for months, and for processing crops is sometimes reconditioned (warmed) before dispatch. Through every phase it respires — burning sugars and giving off heat, water vapour and carbon dioxide — so the store and the bin have to keep removing what the crop puts out.

Get any phase wrong and the loss shows up where you can’t see it, deep in the load. Skip curing and harvest wounds stay open to rot; cool too fast and you risk internal damage; let heat and moisture pool in the centre of a deep bin and you get soft patches, sprouting and weight loss long before pack-out. The bin’s job is constant across all four phases: present an open path so the air your store pushes actually moves through the crop rather than around it.

• Wound-healing (suberisation). Warm, humid, moving air for ~1–2 weeks seals the skin and cut surfaces.
• Cool-down. Step the temperature down gradually to the holding target so the whole stack cools together.
• Long-term holding. Cool, humid, gently circulating air keeps the crop dormant and limits shrink.
• Reconditioning (processing crops). A controlled warm-up before frying lowers reducing sugars for acceptable fry colour.

Why do potato bins have to be vented?

Because the crop is respiring and a sealed wall traps exactly what spoils it. Vented walls and an open base let heat, moisture and CO₂ escape from the full column of tubers, instead of pooling in the middle of the load where rot, sprouting and skin breakdown begin. A solid box stops the stack breathing, so the centre sweats and warms while the outside looks fine — and the first soft potatoes are usually buried layers deep before anyone notices.

The benefit compounds in a stack. When vented bins column-stack with their openings aligned, the walls and open bases form continuous vertical channels through the whole block of crop. In a forced-air or pressure-cooled store that lets the fans pull conditioned air through every bin at once rather than just past the outside of the pallet, so field heat comes out of the deep centre of the stack instead of lingering for days. Drop a solid-walled box into that same stack and it blocks the channel, forcing air around the load and leaving a warm pocket — which is why mixing vented and solid bins in one room cools unevenly.

For high-volume potato storage, a single giant vented box carries close to a tonne of crop on a stable 4-way base — moulded in one piece so there are no joints to trap dirt or fail under load. It breathes through both the walls and the floor, which is what keeps the deep centre of a near-tonne load from sweating. It is also one of the few bins in this class with a published racking figure (1,000 kg), so it can go on a beam where your store racks rather than block-stacks.

How do you cure potatoes before storage?

You hold the freshly lifted crop in warm, humid, gently moving air for one to two weeks so the skin sets and any harvest wounds heal (suberise) before long storage. Unlike onions, which cure dry, potatoes cure humid — high relative humidity stops the tubers shrivelling while the corky wound tissue forms. This happens in the bin on most Australian operations, so the bin has to move air without drying or bruising the crop.

The reason curing matters so much is that it is the cheapest disease defence a grower has. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that around 14 percent of the world’s food is lost… between harvest and retail, with post-harvest handling and storage a major contributor (FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture 2019 — fao.org). A well-cured, well-vented potato crop is how you keep your tonnage out of that 14 percent. The broad targets growers work to are below; treat them as planning ranges and confirm the numbers with your agronomist, variety and climate.

The thread through every row is the same: a bin that only vents through a few wall slots starves the core of a deep load in the phase that matters most. For potatoes the base venting does as much work as the walls, because warm, moist air has to be able to leave the floor of the stack rather than pool on a solid pan under the bottom layer. For the onion contrast — dry-air curing instead of humid — see our guide on curing and storing onions.

How many kilograms of potatoes fit in a bin?

A bin’s litre rating is not its weight rating — how many kilograms it holds depends on the crop’s bulk density. Bulk potato packs at roughly 650 kg per cubic metre; multiply the bin volume in cubic metres by that figure to get the fill weight. A 700 L bin is 0.7 m³, so at 650 kg/m³ it holds about 455 kg of potato. The table below converts real Australian vented bin volumes into approximate potato fill weights, and shows the empty bin weight you also have to lift and the floor footprint each occupies.

Two lessons fall out of the table. First, fewer, larger bins mean fewer lifts per tonne and a tidier stack — but a near-tonne box has to be load-rated to carry the bins stacked on top of it, which is the stack-height question below. Second, the bin you fill is also the bin you lift empty and store out of season, so empty weight and whether a bin folds matter as much as fill weight for a seasonal fleet. For the full crop-by-crop conversion across more bin sizes, see our produce bin sizing chart.

A full-height vented bulk container is the workhorse of a potato shed: roughly 455 kg of potato per bin, food-grade walls that hose down clean, and a heavy-duty base that stacks square for cold store and transport. Where you grade by hand, hold smaller lots or want a shallower load that cures faster, a low vented half bin drops the fill depth while keeping the same 1165-class footprint — and folds flat when the season ends.

What storage temperature do potatoes need?

It depends on the end use, but the rule across all of them is cool, humid and steady. Fresh-market and seed crops are generally held cool — around 4–7 °C — to suppress sprouting and limit shrink. Crisping and chipping crops are held warmer — around 7–10 °C — because cold storage converts starch to reducing sugars, which fry dark and out of spec; storing warmer keeps sugars low. Every potato store runs at high relative humidity (about 90–95%) to stop the tubers losing weight, with gentle, even airflow to hold those conditions through the whole stack.

That combination — cool, very humid, constantly circulating — is hard on a container, and it is where plastic earns its place over timber. Food-grade HDPE doesn’t absorb the humidity it sits in, doesn’t rot, and doesn’t warp or shed fasteners through years of cold-store cycles. A timber bin in the same room soaks up the very moisture you’re managing and carries disease forward between seasons. For the full material breakdown, read food-grade plastic explained.

How do bins work in a CA or forced-air room?

In a controlled-atmosphere (CA) or forced-air room, the bins are part of the cooling system — they have to channel air, not block it. Forced-air (pressure) cooling works by creating a pressure difference across the pallet so conditioned air is pulled through the load; that only works if the bins are genuinely vented through walls and base and are column-stacked so their openings align into continuous vertical flues. Get that right and the room cools the deep centre of every bin evenly; get it wrong and the fans simply push air around the outside of solid or misaligned boxes.

• Vent walls and base. A few token slots aren’t enough for a deep potato load — the base venting lets the bottom layer breathe and warm air leave the floor.
• Column-stack, don’t cross-stack. Aligning the openings up the stack keeps the vertical air channels continuous; offsetting them breaks the flue.
• Keep the fleet consistent. One vented bin family across the room means even airflow; a stray solid bin creates a warm pocket and uneven cool-down.
• Cold-tough plastic. HDPE stays ductile at CA and cold-store temperatures, so bins don’t go brittle or crack under stacked load in the cold.

Because HDPE is food-grade and non-absorbent, the same bins move from the CA room to the wash line and back without holding moisture or odour — which keeps the cold chain hygienic as well as efficient. Browse the breathable options across the fresh-produce range to match venting to your room.

How high can you stack potato bins?

As high as the static (stacking) load rating of the bottom bin allows — not as high as the room ceiling. Every bin in a column carries the full weight of every bin above it, so the limit is set by the bottom bin’s static rating divided by the filled weight of one bin, then kept inside a sensible safety margin. A bin that physically holds the crop still has to carry the stack, and overloading the bottom unit is how a block-stack buckles.

Work it from the filled weight. Using the figures from the table above, a heavy-duty full bin filled with ~495 kg of potato, sitting on a bin rated 4,000 kg static, could in principle carry seven or eight bins above it — but you size to the store’s real stack height, floor flatness and forklift, and you keep a margin rather than running to the theoretical ceiling. Two practical rules:

• Check the static rating, not the dynamic one. Dynamic is the moving-on-forks figure; the stack limit is the static figure. (For the full static-vs-dynamic-vs-racking explainer, see plastic pallet load ratings.)
• Rack the heavy ones. Where you’d otherwise block-stack near-tonne boxes high, beam racking removes the crush load from the bottom bin — choose a bin with a published racking figure for that.

How do you hot-wash and sanitise potato bins?

You wash and sanitise them between crops — which is exactly what food-grade HDPE is built for and timber isn’t. A hot wash at roughly 60–80 °C with an approved detergent lifts soil, skins and pathogens off the smooth mouldings; a sanitiser rinse finishes the job, and the bin dries fast because nothing soaks in. That break in the disease cycle is the whole point: rots and blights left in the grain of a timber bin reinfect next season, while a washed plastic bin starts each harvest clean.

Doing it well is a documented procedure, not a hose-and-hope: water temperature, detergent, contact time and drying all matter for a food-safe, HACCP-aligned operation. In Australia and New Zealand, food-contact materials sit under the food standards framework (Food Standards Australia New Zealand — foodstandards.gov.au), and the open, smooth design of a good vented bin is what makes the wash quick and verifiable. For why HDPE and PP take that wash-down where timber can’t, see our guide to food-grade plastic and HACCP-aligned handling.

A folding Australian-Standard vented box is the all-rounder for a potato operation that wants to manage shed space: it cures, stores and ships ~490 kg of crop on the standard 1165 footprint, hot-washes clean between seasons, and folds to roughly a third of its height when empty — so the out-of-season fleet stacks flat instead of stacking air. Need a lidded or part-vented variant for a mixed shed? Compare the family in bulk containers.

How do you choose and buy potato storage bins?

Start from the crop, the store and the season, then match the spec. The decisions that matter are how much the bin must breathe, what it must fit, how it stacks and washes, and whether you own or pool. Get those right and the rest is detail.

• Genuine ventilation. Vented walls and an open or vented base for a deep, respiring load — not a couple of token slots.
• Footprint. 1165 × 1165 mm is the common Australian bulk-bin footprint that palletises, racks and squares up in cold store and on the truck.
• Fill depth and volume. A ~470 L half bin cures faster and suits hand-grading; ~700–750 L full bins and ~1,400 L boxes cut lifts per tonne for bulk storage.
• Static rating and stack height. Match the bottom bin’s static rating to your real stack height; rack the heavy boxes rather than block-stacking them sky-high.
• Washdown. Smooth, open, food-grade HDPE that hot-washes at 60–80 °C and won’t carry disease forward.
• Fold or nest empty. A folding bin frees shed and cold-store space out of season instead of storing air.
• Buy vs pool. Owning bins suits a fixed seasonal fleet; weigh it against rental for peak-only volume — the trade-offs are in rent vs buy produce bins.

Browse the fresh-produce range or the full bulk containers category, compare volumes and load ratings in the product finder, or answer a few questions and let us recommend the right bin for your variety, store and stack height. When you’re ready, send your variety, volume and freight postcode for a spec-backed quote.

Common questions

Why do potatoes need to be cured before storage?

Curing (suberisation) heals the skin and any harvest wounds so the tuber seals itself against disease and water loss before long storage. It needs warm, humid, gently moving air for one to two weeks. A bin that breathes through its walls and base delivers that airflow in place, so the crop cures without rehandling; a sealed box traps moisture and seeds the rots curing is meant to prevent.

How many kilograms of potatoes fit in a bulk bin?

It depends on the bin volume and bulk density — about 650 kg per cubic metre for bulk potato. A ~700 L vented bin holds roughly 455 kg, a ~750 L Australian-Standard box about 490 kg, and a ~1,400 L giant pallet box close to 910 kg. Onions pack lighter (~550 kg/m³), so the same bins hold fewer kilos. Our produce bin sizing chart has the full crop-by-crop maths.

What temperature should potatoes be stored at?

It depends on the end use. Fresh-market and seed potatoes are generally held cool (around 4–7 °C) to limit sprouting and shrink, while crisping and chipping potatoes are stored warmer (around 7–10 °C) to keep reducing sugars low and avoid dark fry colour. Both want high humidity and steady, gentle airflow — which is exactly what a vented bin in a controlled store provides. Confirm targets with your agronomist and variety.

Can plastic bulk bins be used in a CA or cold store?

Yes — food-grade HDPE stays tough and ductile at low temperature, so vented plastic bins suit cold stores, controlled-atmosphere (CA) rooms and forced-air cooling. The key is column-stacking genuinely vented bins so their wall slots and open bases line up into continuous vertical channels, letting the room’s fans pull conditioned air through every bin at once instead of just past the outside of the pallet.

Can you store potatoes and onions in the same room?

No. Onions cure and store in dry, moving air and give off ethylene; potatoes want cool, humid conditions and are sensitive to ethylene, which breaks dormancy and drives sprouting. The same vented bulk-bin design suits both crops, but they belong in separate stores tuned to each. See why potatoes and onions need vented bins.

Sources: FAO Platform on Food Loss and Waste and The State of Food and Agriculture 2019 (~14% of food lost between harvest and retail); Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, National Food Waste Strategy (halve food waste by 2030); Food Standards Australia New Zealand (food-contact materials). Curing, temperature and humidity figures are indicative agronomic planning ranges, not a storage prescription — confirm with your agronomist and variety. Potato fill weights are calculated from a bulk density of ~650 kg/m³ and vary with variety, grade, moisture and fill method; bin specifications are manufacturer figures for the models referenced. Stack heights depend on the bottom bin’s tested static rating, floor and store, and are planning estimates only. Treat this as general guidance, not a quote.