Bonded
5 facilities in the directory are tagged bonded, spread across 1 country and totalling 152,247 m² of mapped footprint.
A bonded warehouse holds imported goods with duty and import VAT suspended until they are released into the market, or re-exported — in which case the duty never falls due. The authorisation belongs to the specific warehouse, not to the operator as a company.
Bonding defers duty rather than reducing it, and it adds record-keeping the warehouse keeper answers for. It pays when goods may leave the market again, or when the cash-flow saving over a long hold outweighs the administration.
Size and spread
The spread is wide: 15,681 m² at the small end against 44,611 m² at the large, a factor of about 3. The median sits at 32,855 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.
A median building of 32,855 m² translates to roughly 112,939 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.
What to ask beyond floor area
Clear height decides more than footprint does. A building of 32,855 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.
Reading the tag honestly
Facility type here comes from OpenStreetMap tags and nothing else. A building capable of this kind of storage but never tagged for it will not appear on this page, and the counts are therefore a floor rather than a market size. If a facility you know belongs here is missing, its mapping is what needs updating.
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.