Warehouse & units · Greater Manchester
A unit is a big thin box. The perimeter is the lock.
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Be honest about what an industrial unit actually is: a steel frame with thin cladding on it, a very large door at one end and a fire exit at the other. Nothing about that building is hard to get into. Which is why the security on a unit is never the building. It is the yard, the gate, and how long somebody has to work uninterrupted.
Concentric circles, cheapest first
| Layer | What it does | Price |
|---|---|---|
| The yard gate | Decides whether a van gets alongside your unit. Everything follows from this. | £45-140 |
| The roller shutter | Big and obvious. The one everybody spends on. | £55-140 |
| The personnel door | Small, side, ignored. Usually the actual way in. | £65-140 |
| Internal cages | The stock that matters, behind its own lock. | quoted |
| Keys and fobs | Who can open any of it, and who used to be able to. | £45-600 |
Almost everyone spends on row two and ignores rows one and three. A van that cannot get into your yard cannot take a pallet out of it, whatever the shutter is like. And the small side door nobody looks at is quieter than a shutter and always will be.
The personnel door
Every unit has one. It is where the staff come in, it is at the side, and it has whatever lock the developer fitted in about 1997. It is also the only door on the building somebody can work on without being visible from the road.
That door wants a commercial-grade lock and a reinforced keep, £65-140, and if it is on an escape route it needs to open from the inside without a key, which means panic hardware rather than a padlock. We see padlocked fire exits on units constantly. We will take them off for free.
Gates: closed shackle or don't bother
A yard gate on an open shackle padlock is nine seconds with croppers. That is the whole security of your site, undone quietly, in the time it takes to read this sentence.
Closed shackle padlock, decent hasp, coach-bolted rather than screwed. £45-90 and it is the highest-value thing on this page.
Keys, at scale
Units run on shifts, agency staff and drivers. Keys walk. A master key system means you rekey one door when someone leaves rather than the site, and a key chart tells you what that key opened. Above roughly ten doors, or with real churn, fobs cost less than the rekeys within two years.
What it costs
| Job | Price |
|---|---|
| Closed shackle padlock and hasp, yard gate | £45-90 |
| Shutter bullet lock | £55-95 |
| Ground lock / floor socket | £80-150 |
| Personnel door, commercial lock | £65-140 |
| Panic bar on a fire exit | £180-300 |
| Master key system, per door | £45-140 |
| Access control, per door | £280-600 |
| Out-of-hours lockout | £65-110 |
Commercial locksmith · Roller shutter locks · Trafford Park
Questions people actually ask
Where should I spend money securing an industrial unit?
The yard gate first, and almost nobody does. A unit is a steel frame with thin cladding on it, so the building itself is never the security: what matters is whether a van can get alongside it and how long somebody can work uninterrupted. A van that cannot get into your yard cannot take a pallet out of it, whatever your shutter is like. A closed shackle padlock and a coach-bolted hasp on the gate is £45 to £90 and it is the highest-value thing you can buy.
What's the most overlooked door on a warehouse?
The personnel door at the side. Every unit has one, it is where staff come in, and it usually has whatever lock the developer fitted in the nineties. It is also the only door on the building somebody can work on without being visible from the road, which makes it quieter than the shutter and always will be. A commercial-grade lock and a reinforced keep is £65 to £140. If it is on an escape route it needs panic hardware rather than a padlock.
Can we padlock the fire exit on our unit at night?
No, and we will take it off for free if you already have. A padlocked fire exit is an offence under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, it fails any inspection, and it is the first thing an investigation finds after a fire. We see them on units constantly, usually because somebody was using the fire door as a shortcut or a smoking exit. The fix is an alarmed exit device at £220 to £380: the bar still opens instantly from inside, but a sounder goes off, and people stop within a week.
We use agency drivers and keys keep disappearing. What do we do?
Stop trying to get keys back. A master key system means when somebody leaves you rekey one door rather than the site, and a key chart tells you exactly what that key opened, which is the question you cannot answer otherwise. That is £45 to £140 per door. Above roughly ten doors, or with real churn, access control costs less within about two years, because rekeying is £45 to £75 every single time and deleting a fob is free and takes ten seconds.