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Every growing business hits the same wall: the stock stops fitting. The spare room, the van, the shop back-room or the garage fills up, and suddenly finding anything is a job in itself. Before you sign for a bigger unit or a longer lease, there’s a cheaper, more flexible step, and for Stockton businesses it now sits right on the Preston Farm trade park.
The short version. Stockton already has around 7,070 businesses, including roughly 1,125 in retail and 925 in construction. That’s a lot of firms whose stock and kit has to live somewhere. Self storage in the North runs at about £21.65 per square foot against £27.40 nationally, on month-to-month terms, which makes it a sensible pressure valve when the back room’s full.
Signs the back room has had it
You know the symptoms: stock double-stacked in the hallway, a van you can’t get the tools out of, an order you can’t fulfil because you can’t find it. The usual reflex is to commit to more permanent space: a bigger lease, a lock-up on a year’s contract. But most overflow isn’t permanent; it peaks and dips. Paying year-round for a seasonal problem is the expensive way to solve it.
What flexible storage does that a lease can’t
The point of self storage for a business is that it flexes. Take a unit when Christmas stock lands or a launch ramps up, hand it back when it clears. You’re not locked into square footage you only need three months a year. And it comes secure as standard, with 24-hour CCTV and access control, which matters for stock and, especially, for trade tools that are a target overnight.
What fits, and roughly what it costs
Sizes run from a shed’s worth up to a small-lorry load. Here’s the iBOXED range across its Teesside sites, as a guide. The 20ft container is the workhorse for trade and stock, and it’s the one size offered at all three sites.
| Unit | Roughly holds | From (inc VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| 10ft container | A shed’s worth of kit | £90 / month |
| 20ft container | A single garage, a pallet or two of stock | £118.80 / month |
| 96 sq ft internal | A two-bed flat’s worth of inventory | £150 / month |
| 135 sq ft internal | A large two-bed / small three-bed’s worth | £160 / month |
Guide prices, checked 2 October 2026. Sizes and availability change from week to week, and not every size is offered at every site. For what's available today, with live prices, see the Stockton (Preston Farm) and Ingleby Barwick pages.
Not sure which line you’re on? The size guide matches units to what you’re putting in them.
Storing versus working from a unit: the honest bit
Storing stock, seasonal inventory and trade equipment is exactly what business storage is for. Whether you can work inside a unit (pack orders, run a bench, plug in) is a different question, and it comes down to each site’s rules and facilities.
We’ll keep this guide honest rather than promise what a site can’t confirm, so treat the working-from-a-unit question as “check with the site”, and the storage side as ready to go.
Where the space is
Our Preston Farm site is now open at Surtees Business Park, Bowesfield Lane, TS18 3HR, right on the A19/A66 trade corridor, in the middle of where Stockton’s businesses actually are. Ingleby Barwick on Low Lane, inside the borough, remains the alternative for the estates to the south. All three iBOXED sites are pinned on the map below.
For the wider storage picture around the borough, see the Stockton area guide.
