Less Mess Storage opened its fourth Warsaw self storage facility (called 'stores', in the lingo) at the end of May. The new store is located along Aleja Krakowska to the north of the airport and is being touted as a 'near carbon neutral' building. CEO Guy Pinsent says that an advanced sub-surface heat exchange system has been installed to keep temperatures between 8 and 18 degrees Celsius at a fraction of the cost of standard buildings, while the new facility's roof is covered in photovoltaic panels to provide a large proportion of the building's electricity needs (up to 100 percent during summer months). Pinsent admits that with electricity costs so high in Poland, environmental concerns were not the only driver of the decision to build a highly sustainable building, which requires no gas connection. Construction began last September and Pinsent expects to reach full occupancy in the coming three to five years._x000D_ _x000D_ The Less Mess Storage portfolio in Poland now includes three Warsaw sites and three in Prague, where the business began in 2001, when it was called City Self-Storage. Together with a partner, Pinsent engineered a €14m takeover of this business in 2014 through a shell company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. A complete rebranding was then undertaken along with capital raising to fund an aggressive expansion campaign. With the new Warsaw store now open, Pinsent is shifting to focus on the completion by September of a fourth store in the capital and on the construction of new ones in Krakow (due to open next winter), Gdansk and Wroclaw. "I would anticipate another eight openings next year," he says. The new Warsaw location offers 5,000 sqm of GLA, a typical size for such facilities, though under the right conditions, they can be far larger. "We'll go as much as 100 percent bigger than that if the site and the demographic analysis suits that," he says._x000D_ _x000D_ The company targets a mix of companies, private individuals, retailers and e-retailers. Pinsent says that while customers typically turn to self-storage as a temporary solution, they often become long-term tenants. "As the market evolves we have lifetsyle storers," he says. "It becomes a permanent extension of their home, they're there forever because they free up space at home. Businesses also stay with us for a long time, unless there's an exceptionally severe recession. But the data show that self storage is the most successful real estate related sector to be in. It has highly resistant cash flow even in recessions."