UK warehousing demand has grown rapidly but not supply, with just 424 million square feet of space available in the market, owing to a lack of investment, says the United Kingdom Warehouse Association (UKWA).

Retailers make big share of demand, operating 85 million square feet and food retailers 62 million square feet, a third of all capacity, and this excludes third-party providers serving these categories of retailers, said the UKWA survey.

Another cause is a shortage of land for development in the London and the southeast, reported UK Transport's Intelligence.

The result is that in 2009 there was 94 million square feet of warehousing space for sale, but today there is just 21.9 million square feet on the market.

Although 5.8 million square feet of warehousing space is being built, this is insufficient to satisfy demand. There is also an insufficient supply of large facilities over 200,000 square feet.

Combined with the shift to multi-channel retailing and the increased demand for fulfilment centres that entails, this suggests that there are opportunities for both logistics property developers and logistics service providers who can offer shared-user capabilities that will be more competitive in what is an expensive market.