A flat pack storage container costs from £1,350 ex VAT, arrives on a standard vehicle instead of a crane lorry, and two people bolt it together in under an hour. Here is every size with prices, how assembly actually works, and the honest cases where a rigid container beats it.
| Size | Good for | Price ex VAT |
|---|---|---|
| 2.23m | Garden tools, bikes, bin store duty | £1,350 |
| 3m | Site tools and materials | £1,600 |
| 4m | Ride-on machinery, trade stock | £1,900 |
| 5m | A full-size vehicle or workshop setup | £2,250 |
| 6m | The most secure space per pound in the range | £2,500 |
| 3m extra-wide | Wider plant and awkward loads | £1,600 |
| 4m extra-wide | Wider plant and awkward loads | £1,900 |
| 5m extra-wide | Vehicles with the doors open around them | £2,300 |
| 3m COSHH chemical store | Bunded, ventilated chemical storage | £2,700 |
The full range with photos and floor options is on the flat pack containers page.
The container arrives as a palletised kit: galvanised panels, a floor, roof sheets and a box of fixings. Two people build one by hand in under an hour with a socket set. The panels bolt onto reinforced corner brackets, the doors come pre-hung on their frame, and nothing in the kit needs more than two pairs of hands to lift. No crane, no trades, no hire kit.
Just as usefully, the process reverses. A flat pack comes apart to relocate, and once built it can be lifted loaded by crane or forklift, so moving yard does not mean emptying the store.
A rigid container travels on a HIAB crane lorry that needs road access, swing room and firm ground. A flat pack ships on a standard vehicle and goes through a gate on a pallet truck or sack barrow, panel by panel if it must. That is the deciding factor for back gardens, courtyards, basements of sites, allotments and anywhere a 20-tonne lorry cannot work. It also means the delivery itself costs less, and the unit needs no groundworks: any firm, level surface does, with flags under the corners on softer ground; see what base a portable unit needs.
Being straight about it: a flat pack is not the answer to everything. A one-trip 20ft shipping container at £1,995 ex VAT is corten steel, a single welded box, and works out around half the price per square metre of anything else, if the HIAB lorry can reach and you want that much space. For high-risk compounds where attack resistance is the priority, the welded box wins too. And where you want a ready-built smaller store with no assembly at all, rigid storage containers run from 5ft to 20ft. The full comparison of the two rigid types is in the container buyer's guide.
The flat pack wins where access is tight, where the container will move again, where delivery cost matters at the small end, and where condensation would be a problem. For a given footprint it is also the cheapest new galvanised store: £2,500 for 6m against £4,200 for a rigid 20ft storage container.
Tell us the size and your postcode and we confirm the delivered cost and lead time the same day.