Cold Storage Racking and Pallets: Specifying for Freezer and Chilled Areas

Density pays twice in a refrigerated building

Every cubic metre inside a freezer is paid for twice: once in construction and once in refrigeration running cost. That is why cold stores are built around storage density rather than around selectivity. Drive-in racking is the usual choice for cold storage, food and beverage and raw material buffering, and it delivers roughly 80% to 120% more pallet positions than standard selective racking in the same footprint, with lanes commonly five to twelve pallets deep inside a bay envelope of about 2,300 to 3,300 mm long, 900 to 1,200 mm deep and 3,000 to 10,000 mm high.

Where throughput is higher and operators should not be driving inside the structure, the same density is reached with pallet shuttle or four-way shuttle racking instead. Our cold-chain layouts combine galvanized drive-in lanes with pallet shuttle and four-way shuttle racking for high-density frozen storage down to about −30 °C. Whichever route you take, fix the lane depth from the SKU count per lane and the daily pallet movements before the frame is specified.

Finish: galvanizing is a requirement, not an upgrade

Standard surface treatment is degrease, phosphate and powder coating at 60 to 80 microns. That finish is serviceable in a dry ambient warehouse and is what most of our racking ships with. A freezer is a different environment: condensation forms on every surface during defrost and door cycling, and de-icing salts and wash-down chemicals attack a coating at its edges and at every fixing hole.

For cold rooms, outdoor staging and wash-down areas we offer hot-dip galvanizing instead. Our galvanized steel pallets are specified with an 85 micron zinc coating and are rated for cold storage, outdoor, chemical, food and pharmaceutical use down to about −25 °C. The same logic applies to the rack structure: our surface treatment line runs hot-dip galvanizing specifically for outdoor and cold applications, and specifying it at order stage costs far less than recoating a loaded freezer.

Pallets: steel behaves consistently when it is cold

Wood changes with moisture content, and a pallet that absorbed water before freezing is not the component that was specified. Steel pallets do not absorb moisture and do not lose rating across a freeze-thaw cycle. Our galvanized steel pallets are rated 2,000 to 4,000 kg static, 1,500 to 2,000 kg dynamic and 1,000 to 2,000 kg in racking, with four-way fork entry and stacking six to ten high so a buffer block can be built without racking at all.

Standard heavy duty steel pallets carry 2,000 to 5,000 kg static and 1,500 to 2,500 kg dynamic and carry a five-year structural warranty. Because steel and plastic are exempt from the ISPM 15 treatment branding that applies to solid wood packing material, a steel fleet also removes a documentation step on cross-border movements. Tell us the temperature zone, the pallet size and the handling equipment and we will confirm the correct finish and rating in writing before you order.

What to send for a cold store layout

Four items are enough to start: the floor plan with door and column positions, the usable clear height at the worst point, the pallet dimensions and weights including any overhang, and the temperature zones together with the daily pallet movements. From those our engineers return a CAD layout with capacity calculations and FOB pricing within 48 hours, with a structural calculation sheet to FEM 10.2 and EN 15512. Standard production runs 18 to 30 days per container and quotations are returned within 24 hours.