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Building Billion Dollar Storage with Sam Kennard
12/08/2025
Building Billion Dollar Storage with Sam Kennard
Welcome to Newcastle Unlocked. Host Brent Sinclair sits down with Sam Kennard, rich lister and CEO of Kennards Self Storage, the family-owned pioneer of self-storage in Australia since 1973. Under Sam’s leadership, Kennards has scaled to 126 locations across Australia and New Zealand, offering ~101,000 storage spaces and ~920,000 m² of rentable space, including a recent $400M NZD acquisition of 13 sites in Auckland. We unpack: 1. How Kennards started as a side hustle and became a national powerhouse 2. Sam’s journey to CEO at 25 and lessons from decades of growth 3. Development DNA vs acquisition: what makes a site “Kennards quality” 4. The state of the self-storage market (competition, oversupply risk, digital marketing, dynamic pricing) 5. Why Kennards is investing in the Hunter (6 local sites) and how vertical storage is evolving 6. Macro trends: housing constraints, life-event demand, resilience across cycles 7. The next 5–10 years: overbuilding risks, institutional capital, and long-term outlook Hit play and stay ahead of the curve in Newcastle property. Join Brent on as he shares regular content from his podcasts, along with up to date news on the Commercial Property space in the Hunter. Find Knight Frank Newcastle at: Videography & editing courtesy of BC Images
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