Warehousing in Cambodia: Dry Storage, Bonded and Cold Chain

Storage is the part of the supply chain that importers treat as an afterthought until the stock arrives. Then it becomes urgent, and expensive, because you are negotiating from the back of a truck.

This guide sets out the options, the cost shape, and what to check before signing a warehouse lease in Cambodia.

The main types of space

What it costs

Rates vary with specification, ceiling height, floor loading and location. As a planning range:

Expect a service charge on top for common areas, security and waste, and separately metered electricity. Power is a meaningful line for cold storage — check the rate and the reliability, and ask whether a generator is included or you provide one.

Bonded storage

A bonded warehouse lets you import goods, store them without paying duty and VAT, and settle the tax only when the goods enter the domestic market — or not at all if they are re-exported.

What it is good for:

• Traders who re-export a significant share of imports
• Businesses with lumpy sales that want to defer tax until a purchase order exists
• Goods held for regional distribution

What it requires: approval and supervision by the customs authority, proper stock records, and the discipline to keep bonded and domestic stock physically and administratively separate. The savings are real, the paperwork is not optional, and a stock discrepancy in a bonded facility is a serious matter.

Lease terms to check

Shared fulfilment versus your own warehouse

Below roughly 200–300 m² of active storage, or under a few hundred orders a month, shared fulfilment usually wins: no lease, no staff, no racking, and pick-and-pack priced per order. Above that, the arithmetic swings to your own space, because the per-order fees in shared facilities add up faster than rent and wages.

Run both models at your expected volumes. The crossover usually arrives sooner than people expect, and then arrives again when seasonal peaks push a small operation past its capacity.

Insurance and security

Warehouse contents insurance is generally arranged by the tenant, not the landlord. Ask specifically whether the policy covers theft by staff, water damage and fire — and read the exclusions. Physical security varies widely: guarded compounds with CCTV are the norm in logistics parks, less so in standalone buildings on the city fringe.

Practical sequence for a new importer

1. Estimate your peak stock in pallets or cubic metres, not in square metres.
2. Add room for aisles and handling — a working rule is that usable floor is roughly half the total.
3. Shortlist two or three locations within reach of your customers.
4. Visit at a busy hour, not at 9am on a quiet Tuesday.
5. Negotiate the service charge and electricity rate as hard as the rent.
6. Confirm clearance and haulage costs into the site before you commit.

If you have not yet costed the movement side, the freight cost estimator and the guide to Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh trucking will fill in the missing numbers.