What do you pay on running a warehouse?

[brat42]

We are looking at bringing our business in-house for fulfilment of our products (previously / currently outsourced) and doing the sums of how much to outlay monthly for the warehouse itself.

Rent, staff and business rates are the obvious easy ones to consider.

What about the rest though? Gas, electricity, water and insurance I've got. It's a 1500 square foot warehouse with an average energy rating (C) and say 150k insurance for products. I'm thinking about £3000 a year maximum to put consider? I guess some estate agencies might have a small management charge.

I'm finding it hard to find this information online, other than calling brokers.

Could anyone with a warehouse care to share their running costs please? Perhaps in percentage terms, bill to bill, to make it more comparable. Many thanks

 

[Socio South West]

The basic standing charges for the services in your area should be fairly easy to ascertain, and most insurance companies will give you a quote in response to various information - I am sure you realise that more information than you provide here would be required for that for them to assess the various risks. Your existing insurer is probably the best first contact, unless the items in the warehouse are particularly niche

Consumption of the services will depend on several things, and you could do a lot of complicated calculations to come up with figures which have every chance of being way out in the event. In a relatively small warehouse of this size, if you probably allowed £1500 to cover consumption of services (ie excluding standing charges) you won't be too far out, unless you have particular need to maintain specific temperature/humidity/lighting etc.

As we are all aware, care with switches and settings on control systems can make a vast difference one way or the other on these bills, and the figure I quote is based on a warehouse with no specific needs, and nothing special by way of control systems.