Punnet Hunt

Punnet n. Chiefly Brit. a small basket for fruit, such as strawberries.
The hunt for punnets for our hilbarn Christmas fruit boxes has been a challenging one for us. We found local packaging companies who only deal in thousand units (thankfully we're not that successful!). And smaller companies too with all sorts of combinations of punnet sizes, with and without lids, with and without holes... but all plastic. We decided to source a non-plastic version. You know the sort you see in magazines (especially European) featuring luscious strawberries in balsa-like wood or woven carboard punnets? To cut a long story short, friends in London, France, Italy, Margaret River, even the Canary Islands, were at a loss to know where we could find these old-fashioned non plastic punnets. Calls to David Jones Food Hall in Sydney, Donna Hay's General Store, delicious magazine, Accoutrement, Your Habitat, and various other sources proved fruitless (pardon the pun!).
So, what were the alternatives? We found seedling punnets online from America that might have done, but a six week delivery date was past our deadline. We tried to source similar versions in Tasmania through garden wholesale and retail stores to no avail. Even specialist paper stores couldn't help us.
We're sure they're available somewhere (please do let us know if you have any clues!) In the end we decided to make them ourselves. Here's hilbarn's homemade version of the non-plastic punnet: limited edition, available at Christmas only! Hilbarn customers who have ordered their hilbarn fruit box will see the end product (stuffed with luscious, freshly picked local fruits) before throwing it into the recycling bin...Must go - only 40 more punnets to make!