More Opportunities For Self Storage Growth As The Economy Improves
There is opportunity for strong growth for storage units in Bristol because the United Kingdom has been demonstrating clear signs of recovery since 2013 and it is generally expected to continue to 2015. In the United Kingdom, the average square footage of self-storage units per capita is 0.48 while in the United States, it is 7.41.
There are many factors affecting UK self-storage industry. Self-storage is not as ingrained in the British way of life as it is for the Americans. There is also lack of available land to develop for storage facilities and there is the cost to purchase and develop land not to mention the legal requirements to get the project approved.
UK self-storage operator Safestore Holdings PLC has released its financial statement covering the first six months of 2015 fiscal year and it indicated growth in revenue, rental rates and occupancy at its storage facilities in the UK and France.
Safestore Holdings earned revenue of £50.4 million which was up by 7.5%. It’s like-for-like growth increased by 11.2% using constant exchange rate operating in both regions. Like-for-like revenue in the UK also grew by 13.4% while the Paris counterpart’s revenues increased by 5.9% compared to the same period in the previous year.
According to CEO Frederic Vecchioli, the key initiative taken over the last 18 months was to enhance operational performance. The initiative taken is now being reflected in the company’s sustained and improved trading. Inquiries have grown and there is stronger conversion and increase in pricing. This has driven double-digit like-for-like growth in the UK while the strongly positioned France counterpart is delivering a robust performance. Self-storage in France is already on its 17th year of consecutive growth reflecting on the market-leading position.
Safestore has announced a planned expansion of the storage facility in the London Borough of Wandsworth which will add about 25,000 square feet of storage space.
The company is also looking forward to the opening of two London developments at Chiswick in 2016 and Wandsworth in 2017. Safestore currently operates 121 self-storage facilities including 97 wholly-owned in UK and 24 wholly-owned in France. All in all the properties of Safestore comprise more than 5 million square feet of storage space serving approximately 48,000 customers.
