No lease, no rates: why businesses store with us

The bit nobody warns you about with a small industrial unit

Renting even a modest unit is rarely just the rent. By the time you've signed, you've usually taken on a three or five year lease, a rent deposit, solicitor's fees, a business rates bill, a service charge, buildings insurance and a schedule of dilapidations waiting for you at the end. You're committed for years to a space you picked based on what your business looked like the month you signed it.

A storage container is the opposite arrangement. You pay a monthly fee, you can leave on 14 days' notice, and everything else is our problem.

What you don't get with a container

• No lease. Rolling monthly agreement, plain-English terms, no minimum term to sign away and no solicitor involved.
• No business rates bill. The rates on our yards are ours, already built into the monthly price. Nothing separate lands on your desk.
• No service charge. No shared-area costs, no annual reconciliation, no surprise invoice in month nine.
• No dilapidations. Empty the container, sweep it out, hand the padlock back - and your deposit comes back with it.
• No buildings insurance or maintenance. Ours to fix, ours to insure. Cover for your own stock is up to you, and we'd always recommend it.
• No long notice period. 14 days by email or text on containers, so a quiet quarter doesn't cost you a year's rent.

Scale up and down with the actual business

Trade is lumpy. Stock arrives in containers and leaves in dribs and drabs; a big contract needs three times the space for two months and then doesn't. With a lease you size for your worst month and pay for it in all the others.

Here you add a container when the stock lands and drop it when it clears. Take more than three and every container after your third is 10% off, and paying 6 or 12 months upfront takes another 5% or 10% off on top. It scales the way a variable cost should.

It works like a mini warehouse, not a locker

The practical difference from a self-storage room in a building is access. Our containers sit at ground level in a gated yard, so you drive right up to the doors - no lifts, no corridors, no trolleys, no booking a loading bay.

• 24/7 access through mobile phone gate entry - restock the van at 5am before the run if that's when the day starts
• 160 sq ft of floor in a 20ft container, over 1,100 cubic feet once you rack or stack it - see what actually fits
• Sealed, weatherproof steel: dry stock, dry tools, dry paperwork
• 24/7 motion-sensing CCTV, gated yards and a padlock supplied
• Sites at Batley, Liversedge and Leeds, all minutes from the motorway network

The money, plainly

Containers start from under £100 a month. Your invoice shows the VAT separately, so if you're VAT registered it's reclaimable like any other business cost, and the storage itself is an allowable expense - your accountant will confirm how it sits in your accounts. There's a refundable deposit at the start and that's the extent of the up-front outlay. No premium, no rent-free period to negotiate, no fit-out.

Who this actually suits

E-commerce sellers holding stock without warehouse rates. Firms whose premises are full of seasonal or promotional lines. Offices in the middle of a move or refit. Tradespeople who want tools and materials behind a gate rather than on the drive. There's more detail on each of these on our business storage page, including the warehouse and garage units at Batley and Liversedge for when a container isn't big enough.

If you're weighing a container against a unit and want a straight answer about which makes sense, get in touch or call 07375 355233 - we'll tell you if you're better off elsewhere.