One of the UK’s biggest containerised self-storage companies has opened a brand new site in Wrexham.

Lock Stock Self-Storage, who have 16 storage parks across North Wales and the borders, have just opened their second site in Wrexham.

The Wrexham site is at Felin Puleston, on Ruabon Road, where they are in the process of installing 120 containers, trebling their storage capacity in North Wales’s largest town where they already have a 60-container site on the Whitegate Light Industrial Estate on Queensway.

The 120 containers are being trucked onto the new site by lorry and Lock Stock use computer-aided design to ensure the layout permits round the clock access to all the units.

The company are now inviting applications for a Regional Site Manager to manage the running and development of the new Wrexham facility and of the Chester depot and other sites in the area.

Mold will go up more than 60 units to 150, Bangor, 204 to 280, Oswestry, 148 to 248, and Llandudno, their largest storage park, is increasing from 537 to 600 while they have been granted planning permission for another 160 containers on a new site at Holyhead due to open later this spring.

Lock Stock Operations Manager Stuart Bowker said: “We are responding to demand. We are finding that our existing sites are receiving more and more enquiries for storage space and we are reacting to meet that demand.

“We also look to see where the demand is coming from and if it is from somewhere we don’t already have a storage park or where we need more capacity then we look at finding a suitable site extending our existing premises.

“The volume if enquiries at our Queensway site in Wrexham where demand has outstripped the supply of storage space and that has encouraged us to invest in a new site in the town.”

The company currently has 16 sites across North and Mid Wales and the Border Counties and also operates a van-hire business, Take Stock, from its three main hubs at Llandudno, Chester and Rhyl – they also sell fireworks at Chester and Llandudno and on-line.

The company estimate that 60 per cent of their containers are rented by people moving house or keeping treasured possessions but up to 40 per cent, almost 1,000 of their containers are used by small businesses for storing materials.

Lock Stock Director Nick Powell said: “Containers are an ideal solution for many people who need storage space but who may need it on a flexible basis or for short-term use and that applies equally to people moving house who need to store furniture and to businesses which need a place to hold stock.

“Our units are ideal starting points for small and emerging businesses, or traders working from home, that cannot, or do not want to take the commitment that comes with taking on an industrial unit.

“There are no business rates or service charges and with three different sizes of units they’re ideal whether people are looking to grow or to downsize.

“Often businesses can operate from a storage unit and that is one reason we plan our sites very carefully so that our tenants can easily access their units 24/7.”

The containers come in three sizes, 10 feet, 20 feet and 40 feet and all are eight feet wide by eight feet high with capacities from 640 cubic feet to 2,560 cubic feet and their current planned expansion will give Lock Stock 3,000 containers at its sites by the end of this year –with a total storage capacity of over four million cubic feet.

Their existing sites stretch from Bangor along the North Wales coast at Llandudno and Rhyl, on the Dee at Flint and Chester and inland at Denbigh, Mold, Wrexham and Newtown in Powys, and at Oswestry and Shrewsbury in Shropshire.

Lock Stock, which employs 16 staff, was launched in 1998 by brothers Nick and Shon Powell as an off-shoot of the family’s well-known Craig Bragdy ceramic design and installation company.

For more information about Lock Stock go to http://www.lockstock.biz/