You might well be inspired to buy new shipping containers for your own company after hearing how one North Wales coffee roastery has made excellent use of three of them at its Llandudno headquarters.
Heartland Coffee used one of the containers to set up a stylish coffee bar that’s open five days a week, while the second is where it packs its newly roasted coffee. On top of the second container is a third, accessed by a staircase, which serves as a storeroom.
Customers are now able to enjoy a delicious coffee from the bar and watch as green coffee beans from all over the world are roasted and ground to make the coffee, including the brand’s own Landmark house blend.
The company’s Nathan Prosser explained that shipping containers have long intrigued him as a way of creating buildings. “They’ve been a much cheaper option, suit us better and look better than if we’d got a builder in to partition the space and fit it out. We’ve had a great reception to them from our customers. They really like the coffee bar and we’ve fitted out the mezzanine we’ve created here as a seating area using the pallets that our coffee beans are delivered on.”
The shipping containers were purchased from The Container Sales Centre in North Wales, a company that has its own HGV lorry and crane - so it couldn’t be easier to set yourself up with your own shipping container, whatever you want to use it for.
Operations manager Stuart Bowker explained why container sales are becoming so popular at the moment, saying that they’re durable, versatile, weatherproof and cheap - hence the rise in demand.
“Many schools and sports organisations use them as outdoor storage as if they can withstand the weather on a 14,000-mile journey on the deck of a ship from the Far East to the UK then a bit of rain in North Wales isn’t going to do them any damage.
“We invested £100,000 in an articulated lorry and we can deliver them to customers who buy containers from us all over the UK. It’s always great to see a business like Heartland do something really original and stylish with them as well and I’m sure café bar in particular will prove very popular,” he went on to say.
Take a look at our blog to see what other companies have been using these containers for. We recently blogged about how Patalab Architecture in London has made a nine-storey office block in the capital using containers - and it’s the tallest building of its kind in the world!
If you’d like to find out more about containers and their uses, get in touch with us today.