Container hardstand storage running out for operators

THE PRESSURE is on to find land for container-rated hardstands in the east coast's major cities, with the availability of industrial-zoned land in Sydney now under 8%.

With infrastructure such as data centres “starting to take up a lot of industrial space”, property owners looking to get the best return on investment for their land meant a container-rated hardstand may not be prioritised as an option.  

Container Transport Alliance Australia director Neil Chambers said operators in Sydney and Melbourne faced “the same problem”. 

“Sydney and Melbourne have a relative shortage of industrial land, but it's not just the land, it's the way the land's been developed,” he said. 

Realterm fund manager Toni Ryan said the Chipping Norton site in southwest Sydney, the location of their new hardstand, stood out for its proximity to Port Botany and major freight routes.

“That M5, M7 corridor was really imperative,” Ms Ryan said. 

The site historically had been used as an empty container storage facility by three operators. 

“The specification of the yard was quite poor, it was very much crushed rock,” Ms Ryan said. 

“From a safety perspective, it could only really handle two-high. We'd done a lot of research on the ground before sourcing opportunities, looked at the movement of containers specifically from the port and where they mainly moved through.”

 The company consulted CTAA extensively for their Chipping Norton facility.

Realterm, which specialises in industrial outdoor storage, settled the site in 2024, a process that took two years from acquisition to final settlement. 

“A lot of the sites have been taken out to be redeveloped into multi-unit or multi-level estates,” Ms Ryan said. 

“That's why our focus is purely on trying to work and find locations that could suit.”

Mr Chambers said a lot of operational expenditure at transport yards was spent on repairing the hardstand. 

“As places are developed, if you're a land developer or a landowner, you might find it's cheaper to put down thinner concrete.”

Mr Chambers said for some container operators, a solution may be to move further out west, but the trade-off between the cost of a property and moving operations facility to and from the wharf remained. 

“In Sydney, the distances are further between Port Botany and where some of these facilities are. Melbourne's a little bit closer in, but it doesn't mean we don't have the problem of ‘where is the next phase for facilities’,” he said.