One of Deepstore’s new Sprinter vans.

You may not realise it, but some of the most important and long-lived business and government paper archives are stored deep underground, in disused mines.

The operator of one such mine is records management specialist Deepstore, which is named after its main, archival storage facility — an old salt mine, 150 metres below the ground, in Winsford, Cheshire.

This old mine offers 1.8 million square metres of storage space and provides “unrivalled protection from natural disasters and security risks”, making it ideal for business critical data and is a far cry from the kind of DIY self-storage facilities that you or I might use.

Deepstore recently purchased a brace of six new Mercedes-Benz Sprinters, to replace eight-year old Sprinters that had provided sterling service. The Sprinters don’t actually go underground of course — in fact, these vans will be used to collect and deliver important documents and other assets for clients in and around London.

That’s because Deepstore also operates two not-so-deep active storage facilities, both of which are above ground, in Bromley-by-Bow, East London, and Wallington, near Croydon. It is from these locations that the company’s six new Mercedes-Benz Sprinters operate.

Supplied by dealer SG Smith, of Sydenham, South London, all six are Long-bodied 313 CDI models with 129 hp engines married to six-speed ECO Gear manual transmissions, which have been designed specifically for vans and should help the firm’s drivers maximise fuel economy.

Explaining the choice, Chris Gamble, UK Logistics Manager for Deepstore, says:

“Our new vans replace a previous batch of Sprinters that were nearly eight years old but had proved exceptionally reliable. They were a great testament to the Mercedes-Benz brand.

“It’s crucial that our uniformed drivers should feel safe and confident in their vans so we listened carefully to the feedback we’d had from Bow and Wallington before deciding to go with the Sprinter again.

“They’re certainly big fans of Mercedes-Benz and take great pride in their vehicles. That’s important because given that they spend most of their time working in the centre of London, if they weren’t treated with the utmost care  these vans could easily suffer a lot of damage.”

Deepstore offers same-day and two-hour retrieval services for documents and other material kept at Bow and Wallington. The company uses trucks to trunk nightly between these two facilities and its Cheshire headquarters, from which it delivers items on a next-day basis.

You can find out more about serious storage on Deepstore’s website.