Containerville North Wales being built at Deeside Business Park

Shovels are in the ground for the park that combines storage and office space – all built from containers.

The new Interlinq site in Sandycroft, close to the A55 North Wales Expressway, is to be built for Denbigh-based Lock Stock Self-Storage, the UK’s largest containerised storage company.

They already have 18 storage sites across North and Mid Wales and the border counties with over 3,000 units providing their customers with over five million cubic feet of storage space.

Vale of Clwyd-based Jones Bros, one of the UK’s biggest civil engineering firms, have started work on the 2.3 acre site which is expected to have its first units in place by the autumn.

The completed facility will be based on London’s Containerville, the site in fashionable Bethnal Green that has over 40 business premises housed in three storeys of storage units alongside Regent’s Canal.

Lock Stock operations manager Stuart Bowker said: “The versatility of containers is well known and is something we make use of on our sites where our storage units are used by many businesses as a base for their operations.

“That’s something we see being extended at the Interlinq site where we will provide eight office spaces on the second floor of a two-storey construction on a 2.3 acre site which can hold over 250 storage units.

“We have seen on sites like that in Bethnal Green how these units can be converted into office spaces and we propose that each of these 1280 square foot offices will be fully insulated and fitted with air-source heating systems.

“Additional power will be supplied by solar panels fitted to other units on the site and the aim is to create comfortable, modern work spaces that are ideal for businesses with high speed internet and storage space on hand.

“We already have storage sites locally at Saltney, and nearby on the Glendale Trading Estate in Sandycroft, so we see this as a growth area which is ideally situated close to Chester and the Deeside Industrial Estate and with excellent road links nearby to North Wales and the North West.”

Jones Bros have begun work levelling and preparing the site with a mechanised fleet of a bulldozer, an excavator, two 30-ton dumpers and a self-propelled roller which will lay out 9,000 cubic metres of earthworks and 4,000 square metres of stone at the site which is on Ffordd Pentre, just off Chester Road East.

The groundworks carried out by Jones Bros will create a platform for the containers with surface water drainage and sewerage systems and ducting for electrical and communications connections.

Jones Bros contracts director Geraint Thomas said: “This is an exciting new development and it’s good to be working with another Vale of Clwyd company on such a prestigious project.”

Lock Stock will begin moving storage units onto the site when Jones Bros has completed the groundworks and as with all Lock Stock sites the units will be painted in Lock Stock’s distinctive dark green livery, fully insulated and watertight and the site layout will be computer designed to ensure ease of access.

They are all eight foot high by eight foot wide but come in 10, 20 and 40 foot lengths with storage capacities ranging from 640 cubic feet to 2,560 cubic feet.

The new Interlinq site will be added to Lock Stock’s existing storage parks at Holyhead, Bangor, Llandudno Junction and Rhyl on the North Wales Coast, on the Dee at Flint, Sandycroft and Saltney, and inland at the Colomendy Industrial Estate in Denbigh, Mold, Wrexham and Newtown in Powys, and at Oswestry and Shrewsbury in Shropshire.

The company was founded 21 years ago in Denbigh by brothers Nick and Shon Powell.

Stuart Bowker added: “Increasingly we are seeing businesses, especially small businesses using our sites because 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.

“They can often operate from a storage unit, calling there to stock up in the morning before going out to jobs and that is one reason we plan our sites very carefully so that our tenants can easily access their units 24/7.

“We respond to demand and where it is coming from and if it is from somewhere where we need more capacity then we look at extending our existing premises or opening new sites and happily that has been possible here.”