Guide
How much warehouse space do I need?
Warehousing is charged on the volume you occupy, not the floor you stand on. Here is how to work out roughly what you need before you talk to anyone.
Warehouse requirements for stored goods are usually calculated in cubic metres or pallet positions rather than floor area, because racking makes height usable. A standard Australian pallet occupies roughly 1.2 by 1.2 metres of floor and around 1.8 cubic metres when loaded to a typical height, so an estimate of your requirement starts with how many pallets or crates you hold at your busiest point, not your average.
Two mistakes account for most bad estimates. The first is planning around average stock rather than peak, which guarantees you are short exactly when a container lands. The second is thinking in floor area, which ignores that racking is what makes a warehouse economic in the first place.
A rough way to estimate
Count what you hold at your busiest month, not today. Convert to pallets or crates, treating anything awkward as its own item. Add somewhere between twenty and thirty per cent for the fact that stock never stacks as neatly as a spreadsheet suggests, and for goods arriving before others have left.
That gives a working figure to have a conversation about. It is not a quote and should not be treated as one, because handling frequency changes the cost as much as volume does.
Why frequency matters as much as volume
Two clients occupying the same space can cost very different amounts to serve. Stock that arrives once and leaves in one movement is cheap to hold. Stock that is picked daily, in small quantities, to different destinations, is not.
This is why a credible provider asks how often your stock moves before quoting anything, and why anyone quoting on volume alone has not understood the job.
What not to bother calculating
Aisle width, racking configuration and clearance heights are the provider's problem, not yours. You are buying an outcome, not a floor plan.
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Every proposal starts with understanding your business: what you move, how much, how often.