The last marquee is down, the final festival field has been cleared, and somewhere in the back of the van there are cable reels that definitely need sorting before spring. For events companies in South Devon, the end of summer is not exactly a quiet time. It is the moment you have to work out where several months' worth of kit is actually going to live.
Staging panels, lighting stands, flight cases, folding tables, marquee sections, generators: none of it is small, none of it is cheap to replace, and none of it fits in a lock-up that was last measured in 1987. You need something that matches the scale of what you actually do.
Why a Container Works for Events Storage
A 20ft shipping container is, in straightforward terms, a very large weatherproof box with a serious door. For events companies, that translates to one place where everything is dry, together, and accounted for. No tracking down who borrowed the last cable drum. No discovering in February that a marquee panel spent winter under a slowly leaking roof.
The other practical detail is access. The van can reverse right up to the container door, which matters a lot when you are unloading in a dark car park on a wet November evening. That kind of ground-level, drive-up access is the difference between a storage solution that actually gets used properly and one that becomes a source of resentment by mid-January.
What Fits in a 20ft Container
A 20ft container is roughly 33 cubic metres of usable space. That is enough to hold a serious amount of events kit in a logical, stacked layout. Typical loads we see from events businesses include:
- Staging and riser sections
- Marquee frames and PVC panels
- Lighting rigs and trussing
- Flight cases and AV equipment boxes
- Cable reels, distribution boards and road cases
- Folding furniture and crowd barriers
If you run larger productions and one unit is not quite enough, we can talk about multi-unit rates. Having two containers side by side also gives you the option of keeping different categories of kit separate, which saves a lot of time at the start of the next season.
Storing Through Winter Without the Worry
Events kit is expensive. A set of quality lighting stands or a commercial marquee structure represents a significant investment, and storing it badly over winter is a way of quietly spending money you did not mean to spend. Damp, frost, and condensation do real damage to fabric, electrical components, and metal hardware over a few months.
Our containers are solid steel and designed to keep the British weather where it belongs, which is outside. The site is lit and secure, so if you need to collect or drop off outside standard business hours, you are not stumbling around in the dark.
Planning Ahead for Next Season
The end of the events season is also the sensible moment to do a proper stocktake. When everything comes off the van and goes into a container in some kind of order, you find out what needs repairing, what needs replacing, and what you somehow ended up with three of. Going into winter with that knowledge means you are not making panicked calls to hire companies in April.
It also means the start of next season is calmer. Everything is where you left it, dry, and ready to load. That is not a minor thing when the diary goes from zero to full in the space of a few weeks come May.
If you want to know more about container storage for your events business, get in touch with us for a quote and we can talk through what you need.