If you are looking to store bulk grains as part of your preparations, you’ve probably spent some time trying to locate suitable plastic food grade storage containers.
Whilst many online sites mention the 5 gallon buckets (or pails) for food storage containers, the closest size found in Australia would be the 20 litre bucket.
One such supplier of these buckets is The NCI Packaging Shop, this site sells a moderate range of plastic storage buckets up to 20 litre, along with a host of other plastic and even metal containers. At the time of this post the 20 litre bucket are $5.87 AUD (lid costs $1.40 AUD). Smaller versions of the same are the 15 litre bucket $5.65 AUD (lid costs $1.32 AUD), or the 10 litre bucket $4.15 (lid costs $1.22 AUD).
One factor to keep an eye on when ordering from this site though is the freight costs. To Sydney it costs $12.00 AUD for orders under $50 AUD, where-as it jumps to $37.00 AUD for orders up to $250 AUD. So to keep overheads down you might wish to stick to ordering below $50 per order until you intend to spend over $150 – at least for those of you from states other than NT, QLD or VIC. The point is that you might have to fiddle around with the number of orders to keep the freight costs down.
I’m not sure how airtight these containers are, so to be safe you might consider pre-packaging your grains into mylar bags with oxygen absorbers and then storing these bags in the plastic buckets. This way the buckets keep out the bugs and provide a durable storage container whilst the mylar bags keep out the air and moisture.
Categories Food and Kitchen
Thank you for the useful information.
Got any info on where you can get good prices for things like bulk beans (Haricot/Navy, Pinto etc) and soup mix, things like that?
Look forward to seeing more great posts and pointers – have you bookmarked.
So far the cheapest I’ve come across for Sydney is Honest to Goodness in Artarmon.
You can find them at http://www.goodness.com.au
Compared to prices in the US, our prices tend to be higher, but maybe some bricks and mortar stores might have some cheaper prices as well.
Hi, I have been studying what preppers in other countries have been doing. Do you have Home Depot stores there? If so there orange colored 5 gallon buckets are food grade. But more important Home Depot is the only place where you can walk in and buy Gamma Seal lids to fit them. Lots on line but more expensive. These lids by design fit airtight but even so you should still use the Mylar bags with them. Hopefully you guys are building up prepper groups every where.
Hi , If you go on gumtree and look up food storage containers there is a guy who imports food at Penrith . He sells the containers, food grade 220 Litre screw top for $20.00 each. He also has water tanks 1000L appros $100.00.
Be careful with these buckets because if left for a while, they absorb plastic into food you are storing.