Before investing in another cold-store warehouse, are you really maximising the use of all the space you already have.
A cold store can have capacity left on paper and still become increasingly difficult to operate. The actual pallets stored doesn’t match the total capacity. The orders still go out but keeping everything moving is taking more work and more labour than it used to.
Pallets go into less convenient locations because those are the spaces available. Forklifts travel further or take longer to retrieve pallets. Stock is repeatedly moved to reach other stock. Temporary staging areas become permanent fixtures.
The cold store is reaching breaking point, and the extra handling hours, slower loading and growing pressure on the team is impacting business performance and profitability. Eventually, those daily workarounds can turn into bigger commitments: external storage, additional transport or an extension that might otherwise have been postponed.
Before adding more space, it is worth asking how much of the pressure comes from the way the existing store operates.
Every storage layout makes a trade-off between capacity, accessibility and cost
Cold stores use different storage systems for good reasons.
- Conventional adjustable pallet racking gives direct access to each pallet, which can suit a varied stock profile. The trade-off is the need for forklift aisles and refrigerating these “dead spaces”.
- Drive-in racking increases density by reducing the number of aisles. But forklifts have to enter the lanes, where movements need to be slow and precise. Access to stock is also more dependent on how pallets are arranged within each lane and utilisation can often be as low as 65% depending on SKUs and throughput.
- Mobile racking brings racks together and opens an aisle where access is needed. It makes good use of space while retaining individual pallet access, although waiting for aisles to open and coordinating access can affect performance during busy periods.
- Semi-automated pallet shuttle racking keeps the forklift at the lane entrance while a shuttle moves pallets within the lane. That reduces driving inside the structure, but lane allocation still needs to suit the quantities held per SKU and the operation’s stock-rotation requirements.
Each approach can work well. The question is whether it still suits the stock you hold and the speed at which you need to move it.
In a cold store, that choice has an additional cost: you are refrigerating both the space occupied by stock and the space needed to access it.
There is a human cost to every extra movement
Working in a cold store is demanding. Low temperatures, bulky protective clothing and repeated forklift manoeuvres make tasks more challenging, particularly when access is tight.
Every unnecessary journey or extra pallet movement means more time spent working in those conditions. It also means more paid hours to handle the same volume of stock, limiting what the team can achieve during a shift.
The cost of that time goes well beyond the hourly wage. Employers need to account for holiday cover, training, suitable PPE and the cost of covering absence. When staffing is stretched, overtime or agency support can add further expense.
Recruiting and retaining people willing to work in these environments can also be difficult. An operation that needs more labour simply to maintain output becomes increasingly exposed to rising employment costs and gaps in staffing.
There can be a refrigeration impact too. People and operating equipment introduce heat, while movements through cold-store doors allow warmer air to enter. The effect depends on the layout and working practices, but unnecessary activity can add to the load the refrigeration system has to manage.
Reducing avoidable movement can therefore improve productivity, ease pressure on the team and reduce the time people need to spend inside the cold store.
The cost can extend beyond the cold-store door
When space becomes difficult to use, the consequences can spread through the operation.
A production team may struggle to clear finished goods. Wagons may wait longer while orders are assembled. Overflow stock may need to go off-site.
External storage then brings more than a storage charge. There is transport, loading, unloading and the task of coordinating stock across locations.
These costs belong in the capacity discussion. So does the investment required if the next step is another chamber or a larger building.
Automated storage changes the game
Automated storage changes the space needed to store and retrieve pallets.
AutoCube® uses four-way carriers, working with lifts and conveyors, to move pallets through a high-density storage structure. Designed for operation down to -25°C, it removes the need for routine forklift access to individual locations within the automated storage block.
That creates opportunities to accommodate more stock within the available refrigerated volume and reduce forklift travel inside the store.
The energy case needs care, however. Fitting more pallets into the same cold store does not automatically reduce its electricity bill.
Higher occupancy can improve energy use per pallet stored. Any reduction in total electricity consumption needs to be assessed separately, taking account of the refrigeration system, building, door openings and equipment demand.
The commercial benefit may come from accommodating growth within the existing building, reducing handling or avoiding external storage. The assessment needs to establish which benefits are achievable at your site.
More capacity still has to work at dispatch time
A denser store is only useful if it can release the right stock when it is needed and achieve the required throughputs.
Can pallets be retrieved quickly enough to meet the busiest loading window? What happens when incoming stock arrives at the same time? Can it accommodate the batch and stock-rotation requirements of the products being stored?
This is where MAxIQ® warehouse orchestration software comes in.
This means storage capacity and movement are not treated as separate problems. The system can use available storage locations while considering what stock needs to be retrieved, when it needs to move and how the equipment can handle those movements efficiently. MAxIQ® can also connect the automated storage system with wider business systems, so that what happens physically inside the cold store reflects what the operation needs.
But the level of performance needs to be tested against real demand. An average daily movement figure will not show what happens when several wagons need loading together to achieve peak demand.
Start with the operation
At Thistle, our starting point is understanding where the pressure comes from.
We look at stock profiles, pallet volumes, batch requirements and the pattern of movements through the day. We examine where handling time is being lost and what happens during peak periods.
That data informs the design. Simulation then helps test whether the proposed system can deliver the required movements, as well as accommodate the stock.
The assessment also needs to consider installation within a working cold store, maintenance access and how the operation would recover from an interruption.
For some sites, improvements to layout, racking or working practices may be sufficient. For others, automation may offer a stronger long-term case when compared with expansion or continued use of external storage.
The decision should account for capacity, handling, energy, maintenance and service requirements over the life of the solution.
Sometimes the capacity problem is not how much space you have. It is how much of that space you can actually put to work.
