Hire a Refrigerated Container in the UK

Refrigerated container hire gives you chilled or frozen storage at your own site without the capital outlay of buying a unit. In the UK, indicative rates start at around £12 a day ex VAT on longer hire terms — but the headline day rate rarely tells the whole story. Minimum hire periods, delivery, collection and electricity decide what you actually pay. This page sets out the real shape of the UK hire market, including the 90-day minimum that surprises most first-time hirers.

What refrigerated container hire costs

All figures below are indicative, observed on the UK market in 2026, and quoted ex VAT (VAT is charged at 20%). They are a starting point for comparison, not a tariff.

Short-term hire is priced higher per day than long-term hire — the market’s normal degressive structure, not a premium unique to any one supplier. For a fuller breakdown of refrigerated container hire cost by size and duration, see our prices page.

If your requirement is standing rather than seasonal, long-term refrigerated container hire takes that degressive structure apart: how the monthly rate falls as the committed term lengthens, what a twelve-month contract normally covers on servicing and breakdowns, and where the 18-to-24-month threshold tips the arithmetic towards buying. It is the page to read if you are a food manufacturer, a logistics operator or a producer with a year-round cold storage need.

The 90-day minimum, stated honestly

Many UK suppliers set a minimum hire period of around 90 days. There is a plain commercial reason: delivering and collecting a container costs the depot roughly the same whether the unit stays a week or a year, so very short lets seldom pay their way. If you only need a fortnight of cold storage — a festival, a product launch, a cold-room breakdown — that minimum can make standard hire look impossible.

It is not. Some suppliers do offer short-term hire, usually at a higher day rate, and urgent situations are a market of their own — see our page on emergency cold storage. The market is simply split; it pays to ask the right suppliers.

What the hire rate typically includes

Practice varies, so read each quote, but as a rule the day rate covers the container and its refrigeration unit. Ask when the unit last passed a PTI (Pre-Trip Inspection); a test under three months old is the standard expectation for a machine going out on hire.

Normally charged separately:

• Delivery and collection — priced by distance and site access.
• Electricity — you supply the power. A reefer runs on three-phase 380/400 V through a five-pin 32 A CEE plug, though some small units run on single-phase 230 V. Budget for 70 to 170 kWh a day depending on size and set point.
• Siting — the container needs firm, level ground and a supply point within reach.

Chiller, fridge or freezer: one machine

Searches for chiller container hire and freezer hire mostly point at the same equipment. A standard reefer operates across -25 °C to +25 °C, so a single unit covers chilled duty at +2 °C and frozen duty at -18 °C; the set point is agreed when the unit arrives. Frozen duty draws more electricity than chilled duty on the same size of unit. If your requirement is firmly frozen, our freezer container page covers the specifics.

Which size to hire

Three formats dominate hire:

• 10ft — roughly 15 m³, 4 to 5 pallets; effectively a mobile cold room.
• 20ft — roughly 28 m³, 10 to 11 pallets; the workhorse format.
• 40ft high cube — roughly 67 m³, 23 pallets, with 2.55 m of internal height.

A refrigerated container is smaller inside than a dry container of the same length: the insulation takes thickness from the walls, ceiling and floor.

Two of those formats have a page of their own. 10ft refrigerated container hire is written for sites where the larger box physically will not go — a rear yard behind a shop, a terraced access, a farm gate with one tight turn — and it covers the small units that sometimes run on 230 V single-phase, which can decide whether you are able to power the container at all. 20ft refrigerated container hire is the format most UK hirers end up with: read it if you are a restaurant, butcher, caterer or brewer absorbing a seasonal peak or covering a failed cold room, as it sets out pallet capacity, the access a crane lorry needs and what the rate normally includes.

Hire or buy?

The threshold worth pricing is 18 to 24 months of continuous use. Beyond that, buying — used units observed at £4,500 to £7,500 ex VAT — often beats an open-ended hire bill. Below it, hire keeps your capital free and the machine off your books.

When you are ready to compare, describe your requirement once and we pass it to specialist suppliers, who contact you directly if they can meet your need.