What a month! It will come as no surprise to any of you in the industry that October is a busy month for warehouses but we weren’t expecting that — demand was through the roof! We measure demand in ‘pallet weeks’ — a pallet week represents one pallet stored for one week, and last month we hit a massive milestone: over one million pallet weeks requested through the platform! It’s been really exciting to see the growth and we have had to make new hires to cope with the added workload.
People are coming to us from all over the world looking to take advantage of our hassle-free way of finding them space. The really interesting thing was the breadth of variety in the demand — in location, in volume and in time.
Key points from October:
Geography
Enquiries for sites from Cornwall to the Highlands. Heavy concentration around Birmingham and North of the M25.
Customers
Mostly UK-based but enquiries came in from Canada, the Netherlands and the UAE.
Sectors
Strong but expected bias towards food and drink, construction and engineering (aviation).
Volume
From one single pallet space to multiple requests for 1000+ pallets.
Time
From 3 weeks to 3 years.
Repetition
Our customers are coming back and booking multiple sites through us.
86 warehouse operators signed up with us last month. We also had our first fund sign up. They own and manage a portfolio of 42 industrial sites across the UK and have agreed for Stowga to fill their vacant sites with tenants on rolling one-week contracts. They have introduced us to several other funds who we expect to bring online over the next few weeks so watch this space.
If you want to be on our books and get access to the enquiries we get then please get in touch.
November in Focus
No Surprises as perishable Christmas favourites ramp up.
We track and analyse thousands of commodities to understand the pressure they exert on the UK warehousing sector. Each month we look at commodities which are predicted to spike and represent a business opportunity for short-term warehousing providers.
1.) Soft Cheese from the continent peaking over November and December see good volumes in Brie and Camembert — presumably for all those obligatory 5th course cheese plates we will be consuming over the festive period!
2.) Asti Spumante, new wines, aperitif, digestif and dessert wines — Tradition and affectation dictate that we all imbibe an array of alcohol that normally doesn’t get a look in outside the festive period — Sherry? Seriously?.
3.) Dates, Dried Fruit, Peel of Citrus arrive from the ME and southern Europe to complete out Christmases as input in manufacturing and to be sold directly to consumers. Our data suggests we eat a whopping 40% more dried fruit and nuts at this time of year!
Source : Stowgadata Analysis
If you would like to receive specific information regarding commodities or would like us to find you clients within a specific industrial or commodity sector contact us.
Become a Partner
As supply of warehouse capacity constrains the effort involved in sourcing and securing it increases. We continue to be the fastest and simplest way for clients to find, secure and transact on warehouse space. That said, we need even more great warehouse partners to work with on fulfilling this demand for capacity. If you or your business are interested in working together, contact us.
hello@stowga.com
