Art storage

An appropriate climate is essential to store your valuable items with due care and attention.

The depots of the Katoen Natie Business Unit Art are climate-controlled in accordance with museum standards. Moreover, our engineers designed a unique and sustainable type of art storage: airtight, low energy, low oxygen (14% instead of 21%) and fireproof as a result. Our sustainable buildings also have a self-regulating climate, keeping manual interventions to a minimum – ecologically sound and cost effective.

Depending on the materials in your collection and your specific wishes, Katoen Natie will also provide tailormade solutions to store your items safely, with due care and in a budget-friendly manner.

Climate-controlled art storage (museum standard)

• 20°C
• 52% relative humidity
• Climate control class: better than ASHRAE AA+
• Monitoring indoor climate and immediate intervention in the event of deviating results

Sustainable art storage

• 12°C – 18°C
• 55% – 60% relative humidity
• Climate control class: ASHRAE AA
• Monitoring, intervention if the limits are exceeded

Specifically adapted climate zones

• Tailormade, based on the collection
• Monitoring, intervention if the limits are exceeded

Non climate-controlled depots

• No or minimal climate control, e.g. for sculptures or empty crates
• No intervention

All works of art are unique. The art storages of the Katoen Natie Business Unit Art are based on a flexible and modular design, giving each item the right level of protection and preservation it needs.

Long and short term art storage
Just a few weeks, or months or even years: Katoen Natie will store and look after your items for as long as necessary. Need somewhere to store empty crates because of lack of space at an exhibition? Feel free to leave them with us.

Large items

6M wide or weighing 40 tons?
No problem. Our art storages can accommodate items of any size or weight. We can even store (extremely) large items and also provide transport if needed.

Shared or private art storage

You can choose between shared or private art storage facilities. In our shared art storage your collection will be stored securely with other collections, maximising the available art storage space. With private storage you are hiring an individual, lockable safe. Or you can hire a complete section, with or without bespoke facilities/layout.

Tailormade design

Paintings require different preservation techniques from wooden statues, for example.
And works of art on paper are stored differently from textile collections. Each item requires a specific approach.

• Textile collections are fully supported, either on hangers or flat out.
• Vulnerable items are stored on or in acid free material.
• Your paintings will be stored in our painting storage, a specially designed, lockable painting rack (44 m² hanging space), shielded from other collections.

The number of highly valuable works of art far exceeds the amount of available professional art storage space, which means that works of art don’t always receive the care and attention they deserve. The Katoen Natie Business Unit Art deals with conservation in an extremely professional manner. Any item received in our warehouses is protected in accordance with best practice.

Discrete art storage
Each warehouse is totally anonymous with no visible signs on the outside that it houses valuable goods. Only our employees know and they are obliged to sign a binding confidentiality agreement. You
can rely on complete confidentiality.

Academically designed warehouses to guarantee art storage in accordance with the highest standards
Your collection isn’t stored in just any warehouse.
The design of our depots is based on many years of academic and practical research and they are implemented by our own team of engineers.
This means that we can guarantee:

• The highest level of security
• A perfectly controlled climate
• A bespoke layout

Warehouses with level 3 security

An analysis by INCERT, the leading quality benchmark for electronic building security, classifies our warehouses as level 3, which implies that extremely stringent security measures are in place.
That is why our buildings are safeguarded with around the clock on-site security. An external control room monitors all alarms to keep our warehouse managers up to date at any time of the day.
Moreover, all entries, exits and passages are equipped with scanners to prevent unauthorised access.
All our warehouses and art storages are equipped with CCTV.

All our art storages are bonded warehouses, which are customs approved zones, not subject to import duties and/or VAT. Collectors, gallery owners and other art lovers all over the world can store their works of art in our ‘freeport’. The major benefit? We’re the only ones to allow you to remove items from the art storage, e.g. for an exhibition or trade fair, without any additional administration, guarantees or other costs (see illustration). The objects can travel throughout the EU free from import duties and VAT.

The Katoen Natie Business Unit Art has been awarded the ISO 9001:2015 certification, verifying that we employ and adhere to the most stringent methods and procedures inside the art storage and beyond. Every year an external body verifies whether we still comply with the appropriate standards.