Warehousing in Germany
40 facilities in Germany are mapped here, 1,347,673 m² of combined footprint. Germany sits in the Western Europe group, and the directory caps each country at its largest mapped buildings, so this is a view of substantial commercial storage rather than every shed in the country.
The spread is wide: 20,033 m² at the small end against 129,829 m² at the large, a factor of about 6. The median sits at 29,423 m², which is the number worth planning against — an average is pulled upward by a handful of very large sheds and describes nothing you are likely to rent.
Building mix
Every facility here reads as general storage in the mapping. That is a statement about OpenStreetMap rather than about the market: cold rooms, bonded areas and fulfilment operations are rarely tagged, so a building that does all three still shows as general.
A median building of 29,423 m² translates to roughly 101,142 euro-pallet positions once you allow 45% of the floor for aisles, dock aprons and services and stack six levels under a 10 m clear height. That arithmetic is what the pallet calculator does, and it is worth running before you shortlist anything: floor area on its own is a poor proxy for how much you can actually store, because clear height and aisle discipline move the answer by a factor of two.
Cities and clusters
Mapped facilities appear in 18 cities, led by Hamburg (3), Bremen (2), Dortmund (2), Aschheim (1), Berlin (1), Duisburg (1), Eichenau (1), Eitting (1). Storage clusters follow ports, motorway junctions and population, so a country's warehousing map rarely matches its city-size ranking.
If you are sizing a requirement here, start from the median of 29,423 m² rather than the largest building. The largest is IKEA Verteilzentrum at 129,829 m², and buildings at that end are usually purpose-built for a single occupier rather than available as shared storage.
What to ask beyond floor area
Clear height decides more than footprint does. A building of 29,423 m² at 6 m holds roughly half of what the same floor holds at 12 m, because levels multiply while the ground stays the same. Clear height is measured to the lowest obstruction — a sprinkler head, a duct run, a portal haunch — and not to the roof apex, which is the figure marketing material tends to quote.
Floor loading is the second question, and the one that most often ends a shortlist late. A slab rated for 30 kN/m² carries racking loads a 15 kN/m² slab will not, and the limit is per leg under a rack upright rather than spread across the floor. Dense goods — tiles, liquids, batteries — reach the limit long before the building looks full.
Dock ratio tells you whether the building suits your flow. A long-dwell operation can live with a handful of doors; a fast-turning one needs a door for every few thousand pallet positions, plus yard depth to stage trailers. A cheap rate at a four-door building can cost more in demurrage than a dearer rate at a forty-door one.
Fire classification constrains what you may store and how high. Sprinkler design is matched to a commodity class and a storage arrangement, so plastics, aerosols and lithium cells can be refused outright in a building that takes ambient dry goods happily. Ask what the sprinkler system was designed for before assuming a building takes your product.
How storage is priced
Two bases dominate. Pallet-position pricing charges per position per month and suits palletised, countable stock. Area pricing charges per square metre per month and suits bulk, odd shapes or a dedicated space you control. The bases are not comparable without converting one to the other, which needs the pallet footprint and the racking layout.
Handling is charged separately, per movement in and per movement out. This is the line that turns a cheap quote expensive: storage is billed once a month, handling every time stock moves. A requirement that turns over six times in a six-month term pays handling six times, and at typical rates that can exceed the storage bill entirely.
Minimum terms and minimum volumes sit underneath both. A quote for 500 positions at a twelve-month minimum is a different commitment from the same rate at one month, and many contracts bill a whole month for a part month on the way out. Ask what the minimum billing period is, not just what the rate is.
Value-added work is priced per activity and rarely appears in a headline rate: labelling, re-packing, returns processing, stock counts, and any special handling for hazardous or high-value goods. So is insurance. None of it is unusual, but it belongs in the comparison from the start rather than as a surprise on the first invoice.
Terms and flexibility
Storage commitments run from ad-hoc overflow measured in weeks to dedicated space on a multi-year lease. The rate falls as the commitment lengthens, because the operator can plan labour and space around it. What you are buying at the short end is optionality, and it is priced accordingly.
Shared and dedicated space behave differently when your volume moves. In shared space you pay for what you occupy and the operator absorbs the peaks across customers, but you do not control the layout. In dedicated space you pay for the footprint whether you fill it or not, and a seasonal profile can leave you paying for empty racking for months.
Notice periods and exit terms matter as much as the rate. Ask how much notice ends the agreement, what happens to stock still on site at the end, and who pays to move it. An attractive rate with a long notice period is a longer commitment than it looks.
Before you shortlist
Footprints are measured, not estimated. Each building outline is taken from OpenStreetMap and its area computed from the polygon, so the figures describe the mapped building rather than a size bracket someone typed in. Two caveats follow from that. It is the ground footprint, so a mezzanine or a second storey is not counted. And it is only as good as the tracing — a loosely drawn outline yields a loosely correct area.
Three things this page deliberately does not tell you: what any of these facilities charge, what certifications they hold, and how much space is free. Those are commercial assertions about named companies, and no free public dataset carries them per building. Inventing them would put fabricated prices and fabricated compliance claims next to real businesses. They arrive here when an operator answers a request for a rate, which is also the only way a price reaches the rates table.