Vertical storage racks and bar racks hold long stock — sheet, board, bar, tube, angle and channel — off the floor and supported, so it cannot slide, bow, or become a manual-handling and trip hazard. This range is eight products and 28 orderable configurations, from £1,282.92 to £5,506.26. Everything on this page is manufactured by GPC Industries in the UK, and every price below is the live configured price, not a starting-from figure.
Start here: which family do you need?
The range splits cleanly in two, and the split is decided by how the material lies, not by what it is made of.
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Vertical racks — material stands on end in divided bays or sections. Right for sheet, board, ply, plasterboard, worktop, and for tube and lengths you can lift upright by hand. Saves floor area, and a single sheet can be withdrawn without moving the ones in front of it.
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Bar racks — material lies horizontally on cantilevered arms in tiers or columns. Right for steel bar, hollow section, angle and channel: anything too heavy, too long or too flexible to stand upright safely.
If the load is heavy enough to need a forklift every time it is handled, and long enough that a bar rack's arms will not span it, you are into cantilever racking instead. Our cantilever racking buying guide covers where that line sits.
What this range is not, and who should look elsewhere
Be clear about the class before you compare prices. This is a fully-welded, heavy-duty, industrial range and the cheapest way into it is £1,282.92. There is a large and legitimate market in light-duty vertical racking around the £400–£700 mark — bolt-together frames, thinner sections, lower duty. Those are a different product doing a different job, and we do not stock one.
So if you are fitting out a merchant's trade counter or a small joinery shop and you want a rack for £450, this is not the range for it, and we would rather say so than sell you something at three times the price you were expecting. If you are storing steel stock that a forklift will handle, or sheet that two people cannot lift, the welded construction is the reason the price is what it is.
The naming trap: "Economy" is not the cheapest thing here
The cheapest entry point in the whole range is the Premium Vertical Sheet Rack at £1,282.92 (GVR20, 3-section). The Economy Vertical Storage Rack is £1,378.50 — £95.58 dearer. The product names describe the ranges they belong to, not the price ladder, and anyone filtering by name will get this backwards.
Ranked by price, the five ways into sheet and board storage are:
| Product |
Model |
Price |
| Premium Vertical Sheet Rack — 3 Section |
GVR20 |
£1,282.92 |
| Mobile Vertical Sheet Rack |
GVR98 |
£1,313.94 |
| Economy Vertical Storage Rack — 8 Section |
GVR18 |
£1,378.50 |
| Sheet Racking — 4 Bays |
GSR34 |
£1,883.46 |
| Premium Vertical Sheet Rack |
GVR01 |
£2,270.76 |
Do not compare "sections" with "bays" on price per unit. A section on a vertical storage rack is a compartment between support bars at 250 mm centres; a bay on Sheet Racking is a sheet-storage bay with intermediate floor bracing beneath it. They are not the same thing and the per-unit arithmetic does not transfer.
Sheet Racking: there is almost no volume discount, and the 8th bay is the expensive one
Sheet Racking runs from 4 to 10 bays (GSR34–GSR40), fully welded, with intermediate floor bracing to support the sheet material. The price per bay barely moves across the whole range:
| Bays |
Model |
Price |
Per bay |
Cost of that extra bay |
| 4 |
GSR34 |
£1,883.46 |
£470.87 |
— |
| 5 |
GSR35 |
£2,243.46 |
£448.69 |
£360.00 |
| 6 |
GSR36 |
£2,639.46 |
£439.91 |
£396.00 |
| 7 |
GSR37 |
£3,017.94 |
£431.13 |
£378.48 |
| 8 |
GSR38 |
£3,508.32 |
£438.54 |
£490.38 |
| 9 |
GSR39 |
£3,957.36 |
£439.71 |
£449.04 |
| 10 |
GSR40 |
£4,344.72 |
£434.47 |
£387.36 |
Going from four bays to ten improves the price per bay by only 7.7% — £470.87 down to £434.47. There is no meaningful bulk saving here, which has a practical consequence: buy the number of bays you need now, not the number you might need in three years. Two 5-bay racks bought a year apart cost £4,486.92 against £4,344.72 for one 10-bay bought today — a difference of £142.20, or 3.3%, for a whole year of deferred spend and the option to put the second rack somewhere else.
The one step to avoid is the 8th bay, which costs £490.38 — 36.2% more than the 5th bay at £360.00. If you are sizing at seven or eight, take seven.
Bar CUBI-Rack: the 4th column costs five times what the 3rd column costs
The Heavy Duty Bar CUBI-Rack stores flat and round bar, hollow section, angle and channel steel at 3,000 kg per column. Columns are fully welded; the braces and spacing angles bolt together. It runs from 2 to 8 columns, and the ladder has a discontinuity in it that nothing on the product page flags:
| Columns |
Model |
Price |
Cost of that extra column |
Capacity |
£ per kg of capacity |
| 2 |
BRP21Z |
£1,648.74 |
— |
6,000 kg |
£0.275 |
| 3 |
BRP22Z |
£1,910.58 |
£261.84 |
9,000 kg |
£0.212 |
| 4 |
BRP03Z |
£3,217.50 |
£1,306.92 |
12,000 kg |
£0.268 |
| 5 |
BRP04Z |
£3,753.96 |
£536.46 |
15,000 kg |
£0.250 |
| 6 |
BRP05Z |
£4,289.10 |
£535.14 |
18,000 kg |
£0.238 |
| 7 |
BRP06Z |
£4,890.12 |
£601.02 |
21,000 kg |
£0.233 |
| 8 |
BRP07Z |
£5,506.26 |
£616.14 |
24,000 kg |
£0.229 |
The third column costs £261.84. The fourth costs £1,306.92 — 4.99 times as much, and on its own it is 79% of the price of the entire 2-column rack. Every column after it settles back to £535–£616. The model codes change at that point too (BRP21Z/BRP22Z, then BRP03Z onward), which is consistent with a different frame, but the reason is not published and we will not guess at it — ask us and we will put the question to GPC.
Two direct consequences:
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If you have sized yourself at four columns, price three first. Three columns carry 9,000 kg for £1,910.58. That is 21.2 pence per kilogram of capacity — the best value in this entire range, and 26.3% better than the 4-column rack at 26.8 pence.
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If you genuinely need more than three columns, do not stop at four or five. Once you have paid the £1,306.92 step, columns are cheap again: going 4 → 8 columns doubles capacity from 12,000 kg to 24,000 kg for £2,288.76, which is 71% more money for 100% more capacity.
Bar Storage Racks: always take the 6-tier
The static Heavy Duty Bar Storage Racks are double-sided, rated at 500 kg per arm, with 250 mm between arms. They can be drilled to fix to the floor for stability, and the instruction from the manufacturer is to load the heavy material at the base.
| Tiers |
Model |
Price |
Per tier |
| 5, double-sided |
GSR11 |
£1,340.04 |
£268.01 |
| 6, double-sided |
GSR12 |
£1,448.34 |
£241.39 |
The sixth tier costs £108.30 — 40% of what an average tier costs on the 5-tier rack, and an 8.1% uplift on the whole unit. Unless your ceiling or your top-tier reach genuinely rules it out, take the 6-tier. It is the clearest single value decision on this page.
Mobile or static: mobility costs 24.3% and two tiers
The Heavy Duty Mobile Bar Storage Rack runs on four 200 mm heavy-duty swivel castors, two braked. It is 3 tiers per unit, 330 mm between arms, folded height 630 mm, overall 1600 × 1100 × 1560 mm. Two posts £1,666.08, three posts £1,911.96 — +£245.88, or 14.8%, for the third post.
Set against the static rack, the trade is explicit:
|
Static GSR11 |
Mobile GSR51 |
| Price |
£1,340.04 |
£1,666.08 (+24.3%) |
| Tiers |
5, double-sided |
3 |
| Space between arms |
250 mm |
330 mm |
| Rated load |
500 kg per arm |
Not published |
You pay 24.3% more, you lose two tiers, and you gain 80 mm of clearance between arms. That extra 80 mm matters if you are storing bundled or large-diameter section that fouls at 250 mm centres — so mobility is not the only reason to choose the mobile rack, and on some stock profiles it is not even the main one. But if the rack is going to live in one place, the static unit buys you 67% more tiers for less money. Our guide on when to put storage on castors works through the wider decision, and choosing castors and wheels covers what braked swivel castors actually do for you on a loaded frame.
Vertical Storage Rack: sections, and the starter-and-extension trap
The Vertical Storage Rack is fully welded with 250 mm between support bars and is pre-drilled for bolting to the floor (fixings are not supplied). It comes in two quite different forms, and it is worth understanding which you are buying.
Standalone units — 6 sections £1,299.72 (GVR26), 8 sections £1,503.30 (GVR28). The two extra sections cost £203.58, or £101.79 each, against an average section price of £216.62 on the 6-section unit. Same logic as the 6th tier on the bar rack: the extra sections are half price, so take the 8 unless the footprint rules it out.
Bay systems — these build in runs, and each run needs exactly one starter bay with extension bays added to it. Extensions share an upright with the bay before them, which is why they are cheaper:
| System |
Starter bay |
Extension bay |
Extension saves |
| 5-compartment (CR3000) |
£1,924.44 |
£1,607.34 |
£317.10 (16.5%) |
| 3-divider (CR2575) |
£1,684.86 |
£1,383.42 |
£301.44 (17.9%) |
Over a four-bay run of the 5-compartment system, one starter plus three extensions is £6,746.46 against £7,697.76 for four starters — a saving of £951.30, or 12.4%. On the 3-divider system the equivalent run saves £904.32 (13.4%).
The trap is the obvious one and it is expensive to get wrong: an extension bay is not a free-standing rack. Order four extension bays and you will take delivery of four sets of components that cannot stand up on their own. Every run needs one starter. If you are ordering a run to sit against two different walls, that is two runs and therefore two starter bays, not one.
What these listings do not tell you
We would rather you heard this from us than discovered it at the quote stage. Checked across all eight products and all 28 configurations:
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No warranty is published on any of the eight products. Zero mentions. If warranty terms matter to your purchasing process, get them in writing before you order and we will obtain them from GPC.
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Only one of the eight publishes a lead time — the Economy Vertical Storage Rack, at 5–10 days. The other seven publish nothing, so do not assume anything about the other seven from that one figure.
- No stock status is published on any of them.
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Not one of the sheet and board racks publishes a load rating. The Bar Storage Racks publish 500 kg per arm and the CUBI-Rack publishes 3,000 kg per column; the Mobile Vertical Sheet Rack, Economy Vertical Storage Rack, Premium Vertical Sheet Rack, Sheet Racking and Vertical Storage Rack publish no capacity figure at all. If you are storing steel sheet rather than board, ask for the rating in writing before you order — do not infer it from the price or from the word "heavy duty".
- No finish, colour or coating is published on any of the eight.
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The Mobile Vertical Sheet Rack and the Premium Vertical Sheet Rack publish almost no specification at all — a model code, a description and a price. No dimensions, no capacity, no section sizes. That is a real gap and we will fill it on request rather than write around it.
Getting them off the lorry
Four of the eight products carry an explicit manufacturer's note that a forklift will be needed to unload them — the Heavy Duty Bar Storage Racks, the Heavy Duty Mobile Bar Storage Rack, the Vertical Storage Rack and the Bar CUBI-Rack. These are fully welded assemblies delivered as complete frames, not flat-packed kits, and they arrive on a vehicle without a tail lift unless that is arranged. If you do not have a forklift on site, tell us before you order rather than on the morning of delivery. Where you have handling equipment but no forklift, our pallet trucks and stackers ranges cover what can and cannot substitute.
Only the Bar CUBI-Rack mentions assembly at all — its columns arrive welded with the braces and spacing angles to be bolted together. The rest are supplied welded.
Where this sits in the wider range
Long stock is one problem among several, and the right answer is often next door:
Not sure which family fits your stock? Tell us the length, the weight and the section, and we will tell you which of the eight will take it — including when the answer is none of them.
