Middlegate Europe is continuing to expand its logistics operations. That expansion has been running in Liege since the acquisition of TGV Transports in October 2025. Now it is Zeebrugge’s turn.

The company is building a new bonded warehouse on the site, adding 13,000 pallet spaces to its storage capacity.

Building up, not out

“We are expanding our logistics further with a new bonded warehouse in Zeebrugge. There is already a building on the site and we are extending it. This will increase our storage capacity by 13,000 pallet spaces. The investment gives us room to keep growing and to make further use of the advantages of the port of Zeebrugge,” says CEO Kim Notman.

Building land in the Zeebrugge Transport Zone is scarce. The new warehouse will therefore be built high rather than wide, taking vertical space where horizontal space is not available.

VNA trucks for speed at height

Height only pays off if stock can be moved quickly at height. The warehouse will run VNA trucks, also known as very narrow aisle or turret trucks, which operate in aisles far tighter than a counterbalance forklift can handle.

Two things follow from that. More pallet positions fit into the same footprint, and pallets can be put away and retrieved quickly at full rack height. Density and speed usually pull against each other in warehouse design. VNA is how you get both.

A bonded springboard into Europe

The new capacity is bonded, and that is the part importers should pay attention to.

Goods arriving through the port of Zeebrugge or the port of Antwerp can be placed directly under customs warehousing. While they sit in bond they remain non-Union goods, so no import duty and no import VAT is paid until they are sold and released. Capital is not tied up in taxes on stock that has not moved yet.

For sellers based outside the EU, that changes the commercial position entirely. Stock sits inside Europe, close to the customer, without the seller taking on a European tax footprint. Orders can be filled in units rather than full containers, and delivery runs in days rather than the five to six weeks a shipment from origin takes.

We covered the mechanism behind this in detail in our piece on selling into Europe from a bonded warehouse under FCA terms.

One operator from quay to customer

What makes the Zeebrugge site work is what sits behind it. Middlegate runs its own fleet, its own customs team and its own warehousing, so goods can land, sit in bond, clear and go out for delivery without passing between four different companies.

That is the point of the investment. Zeebrugge is a short run from the quay, sits inside the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, and now has the bonded capacity and the handling equipment to serve importers from anywhere in the world who want their stock waiting in Europe rather than crossing an ocean.

Middlegate Europe has been family-owned since 1989 and operates 42,000+ sqm of warehousing across Zeebrugge, Liege and Hull, with 120+ tractors and 220+ trailers on the road.

If you are importing into Europe and want to know what bonded storage in Zeebrugge would cost you, send us your product, your container volume and your European destinations, and we will come back with a figure.