Storage King acquires Safebox Self Storage in Cambridge

Storage King, one of the UK’s multi-site self storage companies, has announced it is purchasing the Safebox Self Storage facility in Cambridge, bringing the total number of Storage King facilities to 24.

An attractive location for self storage

Safebox had built up a successful self storage facility on this site, which Storage King has said it intends to build on – somewhat literally, as they’ve announced plans to expand the present 36,000 sq ft of net let-able space by building an additional 28,000 sq ft towards the end of this year.

Press releases announcing the acquisition also claimed that the current site is 92% occupied, showing the high degree of demand that exists for self storage in Cambridge, which would have been one of the features that made this an attractive opportunity for Storage King.

The actual site itself is situated on the outskirts of Cambridge, a couple of miles from the historic centre but in convenient proximity to the airport, train station and A1134 road.

It is one of six self storage centres in the Cambridge area as a whole, although two of them are in outlying villages – Cambridge Self Service Storage in Girton, to the north, and Megastorage in Sawston, to the south.

Pickfords Self Storage owns the self storage centre which is actually closest to the middle of Cambridge, while there are two other companies located in the northwest part of the town.

With this many self storage centres, there’s clearly a high demand for self storage in Cambridge, especially if they’re all as well-occupied as Safebox. Why should this be.

Why there’s a market for self storage in Cambridge

The most obvious attraction for self storage companies to enter the Cambridge market is its large student population, as the city contains around 38,000 people during term time, divided between the world-famous University of Cambridge and the more modern Anglia Ruskin University.

As is the case with most British universities at the moment, they both have large numbers of foreign students, many of whom are likely to leave their possessions in Cambridge over the summer while they return to their homes overseas. Self storage provides an obvious solution to their problem of finding somewhere to keep their belongings – especially since the price of self storage is likely to compare favorably with the expense and sheer hassle of moving clothes and furniture between Britain and other parts of the world, especially the Far East, where many of these foreign students come from.

Even without students, Cambridge makes an attractive location for self storage. It has a large permanent community of wealthy residents who are likely to need self storage while they redecorate, or just to create extra room in their homes.

There are many small businesses in the city (including the sole traders in its lively market) which need self storage to look after records and stock. Cambridge is also home to some much larger companies – especially in the IT cluster known as silicon fen – which may view self storage as a convenient way of looking after large and bulky pieces of technology while they aren’t needed at the office.

Indeed, there are so many factors that make Cambridge one of the UK’s best small-city self storage markets that it isn’t at all surprising Storage King have decided to make this purchase. Perhaps the real surprise should be that the biggest UK self storage companies – Big Yellow, Safestore, Access and Shurgard – haven’t got in on the act yet. If this takeover is the shape of things to come, then surely they will soon.