Commercial Moving Services in Dubai

Phasing the move so you keep trading

Very few retail or clinic moves should happen in one go. The back of house can usually move while you are still open: the stock room, spare equipment, files, the staff room, anything a customer never sees. Once that is out, the shop floor or the treatment room moves in a single night and you open at the new address the next morning.

A restaurant is usually the other way around. Kitchen equipment goes first so it can be positioned and connected before anything perishable arrives, and dry stores and cold storage move last and fast, because there is a limit to how long stock can sit off refrigeration. A salon sits between the two: stations and mirrors move overnight, product and retail stock follows once the units are back on the wall.

Working outside trading hours needs approval rather than good intentions. In a mall or a mixed use tower, night access has to be approved by building management in advance, the goods lift runs in booked slots, and security will want a crew list with names and vehicle details before the night. Free zone premises in DMCC, JLT, DIFC or Dubai Silicon Oasis can take longer to approve than a mainland unit, because the free zone authority and the building both have to be satisfied. We apply for all of it and tell you plainly what needs your signature.

Stock, shelving and racking

Stock is the part that causes arguments after the event, so we count it. Goods are packed into numbered crates against a list, the list travels with the load, and you or your manager signs it at both ends. If your stock already sits on a system, the crate numbers can be recorded against your own inventory references, so the reconciliation at the new unit takes an hour instead of a weekend.

Shelving, gondolas, display cases, counters and salon stations are dismantled rather than dragged. Glass shelves and display panels are wrapped in bubble and then boarded, not just blanketed. Fixings stay with the unit they came from. At the new premises those units go back up before the stock arrives, because shelves that are not built yet cannot be filled. Taking shelving off a wall also leaves anchor holes, and most tenancy agreements in Dubai require the unit handed back in the condition you took it, so agree with your landlord early who is making good and repainting.

Warehouse racking in Al Quoz and Dubai Investment Park is a job of its own. Pallet racking carries a load rating and it is bolted and braced for a reason, so heavy racking should be taken down and re erected with the racking supplier or a qualified installer involved, then inspected before you load it again. We move the racking, the pallets and the stock. We will not sign off a rack we did not design.

Specialist equipment and the paperwork that stays with you

Some equipment we will transport but will not commission. Fridges, freezers and cold rooms in a restaurant, dental chairs, imaging equipment, autoclaves and laboratory instruments in a clinic, and anything that has been calibrated all need the manufacturer or your own service engineer at the other end. We move them upright and strapped, we place them exactly where your engineer wants them, and we wait if the sequence needs it. The calibration, the gas, the water connection and the certificate are theirs, and no mover should claim otherwise.

Cold chain is the tightest constraint in any food or clinic move. Anything temperature controlled has to go last, go quickly, and go straight into a unit that is already running. That means the electricity at the new premises has to be live and the cold room down to temperature before the move, so build those dates into the plan rather than hoping it works out on the night.

The licence side is yours. Changing the address on your trade licence, telling your regulator, updating the health authority file for a clinic, the food permit for a restaurant, your bank, your insurer and your customers are all things only the licence holder can do. We can give you the move dates in writing so you have something to submit, and we can time the move around an inspection date, but we cannot make those changes for you.

Useful links: UAE business services and Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.

What a commercial move in Dubai costs

Commercial moves are priced from a site visit to both units, because the cost sits in the details rather than in the volume. A small salon with lift access and a loading bay is a short overnight job. A warehouse with racking, pallets and a forklift requirement is a different scale of work, and so is a clinic where half the equipment needs an engineer standing next to it.

These are the things we price on, and the reason we will not put a figure on it over the phone: