UK SIC 2007 · 52220
Service activities incidental to water transportation (SIC code 52220)
Service activities incidental to water transportation is UK SIC code 52220. It sits in division 52 (Warehousing and support activities for transportation) of the SIC 2007 list. On the August 2026 Companies House register, 1,302 active UK companies list 52220 among their SIC codes. 874 of them list it first.
Division 52 keeps freight moving without driving, sailing or flying it. The dominant code is 52290. Freight forwarders, customs brokers, shipping agents and logistics arrangers of every kind sit there. Warehousing has its own code, 52103, for land-linked storage sites. Cargo handlers use 52243. Code 52219 sweeps up other services around road and rail transport, from lorry parks to transport management. Companies here sell coordination and space, not wheels. That is what separates them from the carriers in divisions 49 to 51.
Related SIC codes
52241, Cargo handling for water transport activities52101, Operation of warehousing and storage facilities for water transport activities52102, Operation of warehousing and storage facilities for air transport activities52290, Other transportation support activities52103, Operation of warehousing and storage facilities for land transport activitiesWho prospects SIC 52220 companies
Suppliers to logistics treat these codes as their master list. Warehouse fit-out and racking firms, forklift and materials handling dealers, WMS and freight software vendors, industrial property agents and cargo insurers all sell to forwarders and warehouse operators. Recruiters supplying warehouse and customs staff do the same. Watch new incorporations. They often line up with a first unit or an anchor contract win. Watch growth between filed accounts too, which usually means more pallets, more people and more software seats. Customs-facing firms often neglect their website, so the poor-website filter reads as unmet need rather than a dead end.
Lead generation for trades & construction →How to read SIC 52220
SIC 52220 is a five-digit code, and the digits are not arbitrary. The first two, 52, are the division, warehousing and support activities for transportation. Add the third and you have group 522; the fourth narrows it to a class, and the fifth to the subclass, which is the level Companies House actually asks a company to pick. The whole division sits under section H, transportation and storage, the broadest tier there is. Reading a code left to right therefore goes from a whole sector down to one activity.
More on how SIC 52220 is built
A company chooses its own codes when it incorporates and can change them on any confirmation statement. It may list up to four, and Companies House does not check whether they are right. That is why 52220 is worth reading as a claim the company made about itself rather than as a verified fact, and why the first-position and any-position counts above differ.
Measured on the August 2026 register, the busiest registered-office post towns for 52220 are London (305), Wirral (28), Southampton (28), Chester (20) and Liverpool (19). Those are registered-office locations, which is where the paperwork sits rather than necessarily where the work happens, so treat them as where to start looking rather than as a service area.
Using SIC 52220 as a filter
1,302 companies is 0.03 per cent of the 5,190,464 active companies on the UK register, and ranks 52220 7th most used of the 10 codes we track in division 52. That is the pool before any filter. Whether it is a big market for you depends on what you sell, but it is the number every other filter on this page cuts down from.
More on filtering by SIC 52220
874 companies put 52220 first and a further 428, 33 per cent, list it in one of their other three SIC slots. That gap is the difference between a tight list and a broad one. First-code-only is the safer filter when you are writing to them; matching any position is worth it when you need the volume.
These companies are spread out. London is the largest single cluster at 23 per cent and the top five post towns together hold only 31 per cent, so the remaining 69 per cent sits across the rest of the country. A regional filter narrows this list without gutting it, which makes it a reasonable code to work territory by territory.
In practice the code on its own is rarely the whole filter. Pair 52220 with an incorporation date to catch companies in their first months, when they are still choosing suppliers, or with a filing deadline to reach them while the year end is on their mind. A worked example for this code: 52220, registered office in London, incorporated in the last ninety days, which turns a 1,302 company pool into a list you can write to in an afternoon. Add the poor-website filter if what you sell is a website, or a recent change of officer if you sell to whoever just took the job. Every company you pull carries the Companies House record, the director's name, a verified website and a verified email, and the ones we cannot complete are not charged.
Where SIC 52220 clusters in the UK
ACTIVE COMPANIES BY REGISTERED-OFFICE POST TOWN · COMPANIES HOUSE REGISTER, AUGUST 2026
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About SIC 52220
How many UK companies use SIC code 52220?
1,302 active UK companies list 52220 (Service activities incidental to water transportation) among their registered SIC codes. Each company may register up to four. Of those, 874 put it first. The figures come from the August 2026 Companies House register snapshot, and count active companies only.
Which SIC code should a freight forwarder choose?
Use 52290, other transportation support activities. It is the standard forwarder code. It also covers customs brokerage, ship and air cargo agency, and general logistics arranging. The company picks it at incorporation or on a confirmation statement, and nobody vets it. Forwarders who also run their own vehicles often add 49410 as a second code.
Should a 3PL with its own warehouse and trucks register under 52 or 49?
Use both. Register 52103 for the warehousing side and 49410 for road transport. Companies House allows up to four SIC codes per company. Listing the pair gives customers, insurers and lenders an accurate picture. You can rebalance the codes later on a CS01 if the business model shifts.
Find UK SIC 52220 companies
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