Annual Report 2019, FEDESSA

FEDESSA, the European industry association for self storage companies, recently released the European Industry Report 2019, a comprehensive annual report on trends and developments in the European self storage industry. A glimpse into the (near) future is not shunned. The report can be downloaded from the website of FEDESSA. For those who don’t have the time to read it, we’ve already got a few currants out of the porridge.

– The six countries with the largest storage volume (Great Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands (7%), Germany and Norway) still together account for 80% of the European storage market.
– The average rental price is 259 euros per year per square meter, the Netherlands is well below that with 200 euros on average.
– The average occupancy rate is 79%. In the Netherlands it is 85%. 31% of the companies had an occupancy rate of 85% or higher.
– 11% of the turnover comes from peripheral areas such as the rental/sale of vans, blankets, lighting, power connection. There is still a lot to gain here.
– 65% of the customers come ‘inside’ via the website. However, many companies do not yet see an online application as a regular question. As a result, many rental opportunities remain.
– Sustainability: 60% of the rental volume is illuminated with LED lighting, only 4% of the landlords use solar panels for energy supply, 2% have ‘green’ roofs.
– The number of staff per branch will decrease steadily, from an average of 1.77 in 2015 to 1.43 in 2019. An important cause is the advancing automation within the industry. Think of things like online reservations and payments.
– 33% of all companies now offer 24/7 access to the rental location, compared to 19% two years ago.

In the upcoming newsletters we will discuss various topics from the report in more detail.