Size of the industry

It is always difficult to calculate the exact size of the self storage industry in any region. Not all facilites are officially registered and small facilities can be opened in rural areas with limited marketing or online presence.

There will always be a number of companies who are entering the market in a small way, who are ‘testing the water’, or suggesting that they are self storage providers when actually they are not. Individual operators gathering data on their industry are often not aware of these smaller operators, and associations will traditionally have stronger data on their members than non member operators.

There will always be some businesses, large and small, that for various reasons do not wish to become members of their local industry association. Over the past year, FEDESSA and its members have increased their efforts to measure the size of the self storage industry, including the non member sites in every European country. We estimate that there are around 4,290 facilities of any note across Europe.

Every year FEDESSA sends out a self storage questionnaire to all its members.

Here are some of the key findings (facility position as at 31 March 2019):

The top ten operators in Europe represent 25% of the number of facilities and 40% of the total available space
80% of facilities in Europe are located in six countries
The average rent in Europe is €259 per square metre per annum
The average occupancy is 79%
31% of the facilities in our dataset had occupancy levels of between 85-90%
97% of facilities have electronic access control and a third now offer 24 hour access, a significant increase from 19% in 2017
Operators were slightly more cautious than last year, however three out of four operators are still expecting 2019 to be a more profitable year than 2018
There are 68 facilities under construction, 52 in the planning process stage and 100 speculative within the survey sample