FBA Prep Centre Costs in the UK: What You'll Actually Pay

A UK FBA prep centre will typically cost you somewhere between £0.25 and £0.90 per unit for standard prep - inspection, poly bag, FNSKU label - plus storage and, at some providers, a stack of ancillary fees that can double the headline rate. The per-unit price on the pricing page is the start of the calculation, not the end of it. Here's how the costs actually break down, what the market typically charges, and how to compare quotes without being caught out.

The core cost: per-unit prep

Most UK prep centres charge per unit, with rates stepping down as monthly volume rises. Typical market ranges (unnamed providers, gathered from published rate cards):

| Monthly volume | Typical UK market range | Oakmont rate | | --- | --- | --- | | 1–500 units | £0.60–£0.90/unit | £0.50 | | 501–1,000 units | £0.50–£0.75/unit | £0.45 | | 1,001–2,000 units | £0.40–£0.60/unit | £0.40 | | 2,001–3,000 units | £0.35–£0.50/unit | £0.35 | | 3,001+ units | £0.28–£0.45/unit | £0.30 |

The critical question is what the per-unit rate includes. At some providers the headline rate is labelling only, with inspection and poly bagging charged separately at £0.10–£0.30 each. A "£0.40/unit" quote that becomes £0.75 once you add a bag and a quality check is not cheaper than a £0.50 all-in rate. Oakmont's per-unit prices above include inspection, FNSKU labelling and packing into Amazon-ready cartons. Poly bagging is published separately at £0.20 a unit rather than folded into the headline.

Setup fees, subscriptions and minimums

Three structural costs to check before you look at unit rates at all:

• Setup / onboarding fees: typically £0–£200 in the UK market. There is no operational justification for a large one; treat it as a negotiating point.
• Monthly subscription: many prep centres charge nothing; some charge £20–£50/month for software and account management. Oakmont charges £30/month, and only in months you ship under 100 units - above that it is waived - with the first month free and no setup fee.
• Minimum volumes or minimum monthly spend: common at larger 3PLs (sometimes £250–£500/month minimum). If you're seasonal or just starting, a minimum can mean paying for capacity you don't use. Oakmont has no minimums and runs month-to-month.

A subscription with no minimums usually beats "free account" plus high unit rates once you're shipping a few hundred units a month - but run your own numbers at your actual volume.

Storage

Prep centres charge for stock that sits between arrival and shipping out. Typical UK structures:

• Per pallet per week: typically £2.50–£5.00. Works out around £5–£10 per cubic metre per month, but you pay for the whole position whether the pallet is full or a quarter full.
• Per bin/tote per week: typically £0.75–£1.50 for smaller SKUs.
• Per cubic metre per month: typically £8–£15 measured on space allocated. Amazon's own off-peak FBA storage is roughly £25 per cubic metre per month and materially more in Q4, which is the number that actually matters if you are buffering stock out of FBA.

Oakmont charges one rate: free for the first 30 days of every delivery, then £20 per cubic metre per month on the measured volume of the goods - your products' own package dimensions times the units on hand. That looks high next to a pallet quote and it is deliberately not the same measurement: product volume runs about two thirds of the space goods really consume once you allow for overhang, unstackable cartons and an aisle to reach them, so £20 a cubic metre of product is nearer £13 a cubic metre of shelf. Ask any provider quoting per cubic metre which of the two they mean, because the answer moves the bill by about 40%.

If your stock turns over quickly - arrives, gets prepped, ships to Amazon within days - storage is a rounding error. If you're using the prep centre as a buffer warehouse to drip-feed FBA (a sensible strategy given Amazon's own storage fees and capacity limits), storage becomes a real line item. Model it.

Receiving and container handling

Getting stock into the building has its own costs:

• Carton receiving: often free up to a threshold, or £0.25–£1.00 per carton.
• Container devanning: unloading a loose-loaded container is genuine labour. UK market rates are typically £200–£400 for a 20ft and £300–£550 for a 40ft. Oakmont unloads containers on site and prices each one on the job rather than publishing a flat rate.
• Pallet receiving: usually free or nominal if the pallet arrives labelled and matching an announced delivery.

Unannounced deliveries frequently attract surcharges anywhere - announcing stock in advance (an ASN) is free and avoids them.

The extras that inflate a bill

Ask every prospective prep centre for their full ancillary rate card. Common items:

| Service | Typical UK range | | --- | --- | | Bubble wrap / fragile prep | £0.30–£0.80/unit | | Bundling / multipack build | £0.30–£1.00/unit | | Removal order receiving & grading | £0.80–£1.50/unit | | Expiry date labelling | £0.10–£0.25/unit | | Photos of stock | £0.50–£2.00/photo, or free | | Disposal | £0.20–£0.50/unit | | Shipping to Amazon | carrier cost, sometimes with a margin added |

Two of these deserve special attention. Returns and removal orders: if you sell at volume, stock will come back, and a centre that charges heavily to receive and grade removals gets expensive fast (ask what a centre charges to receive and grade them before you need the answer). Shipping margin: some centres add 10–20% on carrier rates; others pass them through or let you use your own accounts. Ask directly.

A worked example

Say you send 1,000 units a month, half needing poly bags, and stock turns in two weeks:

• Prep at Oakmont's 501–1,000 tier: 1,000 × £0.45 = £450 (inspection and labels included)
• Poly bags on 500 units: 500 × £0.20 = £100
• Storage: £0 - a two-week turnaround finishes well inside the free 30 days
• Account fee: £0 - 1,000 units is well over the 100-unit waiver
• Total: £550/month, or £0.55 per unit all-in.

Now hold the same stock for ten weeks instead. Say those 1,000 units are 3 litres each, so 3 m³ on hand: the first 30 days are free, leaving about 5.7 chargeable weeks at £13.86 a week - roughly £79. Storage is a rounding error on stock that moves and a real line item on stock that sits, which is exactly the incentive it should create.

Run the same exercise on any competing quote - including their bag, inspection, receiving and software fees - and compare the all-in per-unit figure, not the headline rate.

How Oakmont handles it

Oakmont publishes the whole rate card: £0 setup, £30/month only in months you ship under 100 units (first month free), no minimums, month-to-month terms, and per-unit prep from £0.50 down to £0.30 with inspection, FNSKU labelling and Amazon-ready packing included. Storage and every add-on is priced on the pricing page rather than revealed on the first invoice, and the client portal shows a live billing ledger so you can see charges accrue as they happen rather than reconciling a surprise at month end.