Cold store and freezer pallets: what to specify below -25C

Below −25°C polymers lose impact resistance, so a freezer pallet must be specified for the coldest point in the process, not the average. Settle the grade and the deck geometry against that figure, add freezer spacers where product needs air between layers, and avoid timber, which absorbs moisture and then freezes.

Written and reviewed by the Beecraft UK Sales & Technical Team · Last reviewed 25 August 2026 · Beecraft UK Ltd, company no. 2460437

Why do plastic pallets behave differently in a freezer?

Because polymers get stiffer and less forgiving as they get colder. Everything else follows from that.

At warehouse temperature a plastic pallet absorbs a knock: a forklift tine catches a corner block, the material flexes, the pallet carries on. Take the same pallet down to −28°C and it has far less ability to deform on impact, so the energy that went into flexing goes into cracking instead. Operations that never broke a pallet on the dock start finding split corners and snapped runners in the freezer aisle.

Cold-store forklift work makes it worse: visors mist, gloves are thick, aisles are narrow. So the question is not “is this suitable for freezer use?” but “what impacts, at what temperature, how many times?”

Should you specify for the average temperature or the coldest point?

The coldest point, always — averaging is the most common way a cold-store pallet purchase goes wrong.

A frozen operation is not one temperature. Product comes off the line warm, blast freezes at perhaps −35°C, moves into a holding store at −22°C, sits in racking for weeks, gets picked and crosses a chilled marshalling area. Specify against the holding store because that is where the pallet spends most of its life, and you have specified against the mildest part of the duty.

Failures do not happen at the average. They happen on the coldest morning, in the coldest room, when a driver clips a fully loaded pallet coming out of the blast cell. That event is the design case.

And the pallet is not just cold, it is cold and loaded. Static, dynamic and racking capacities are three different figures, and racking is always the lowest — see load capacity explained. Cold-store racking is often drive-in or mobile, which concentrates load in ways beam racking does not.

What do freezer spacers actually do?

They put a controlled air gap between layers so cold air moves through the stack instead of around it.

Freezing speed is governed by how quickly cold air reaches the product. Stack cartons directly on each other and the middle of the pallet is insulated by the product around it: outside cases hit temperature quickly, the core takes hours longer, and you either hold the batch until the slowest carton is down or release product that is not fully frozen.

A freezer spacer sits between layers and holds them apart, giving faster and more even freezing across the pallet. That shows up in three places:

• Throughput. Shorter cell time, more batches through the same blast capacity.
• Product quality. Faster freezing generally means smaller ice crystals and less drip loss on thaw — which matters to meat, fish and ready-meal producers.
• Crush damage. Spacers carry the layer above instead of the cartons doing it, so the bottom layer arrives intact.

Spacers and pallets solve different problems: the pallet carries the load and takes the impacts, the spacer manages airflow within it. Most blast-freezing operations need both.

Why is timber a poor material for a cold store?

Because wood is porous, and a cold store is a wet environment before it is a cold one.

A wooden pallet in a damp area takes up moisture. Move it into the freezer and that moisture freezes inside the timber; move it out and it thaws. Repeat that a few hundred times and the pallet gains weight, splits along the grain and works its fixings loose — and a wet pallet eats into your payload.

Three further problems matter more in food:

• Foreign body risk. Splinters, loose nails and staples where product may be open or lightly wrapped.
• Cleanability. You cannot properly wash and dry a timber pallet, and in a cold store you certainly cannot dry it.
• Mould and microbial growth. Damp timber in chilled marshalling areas is a known harbourage point, and exactly what an auditor stops to look at — see our guide to BRCGS pallet requirements.

A moulded plastic pallet does not absorb water, holds its dimensions across thousands of cycles and can be washed and put straight back into service. That dimensional stability decides it in automated cold stores, where a pallet a few millimetres out of true is rejected by the conveyor at −22°C with a full load on it. Operators in the North West cold-chain cluster around Manchester switched for exactly that reason.

What goes wrong when pallets come out of the freezer?

Condensation, and everything that follows from it.

A pallet at −25°C brought into a marshalling area at +8°C sits below the dew point of the air around it, so water condenses on every surface. Labels stop sticking, shrink wrap slips, floors get wet under the load. Put it back in the freezer before it dries and that water becomes ice.

Ice is the underrated cold-store problem. It builds up in fork apertures until a driver cannot get a clean entry, fills open deck patterns so the pallet no longer sits flat, and freezes pallets to each other in a stack — then someone lifts, and takes the one below with it.

Design choices that help:

• Open decks that drain rather than closed decks that hold a puddle — unless your hygiene regime needs a closed deck, in which case ask about drainage features.
• Smooth surfaces and generous radii, so water runs off instead of sitting in a corner.
• A pallet you can wash, because the answer to ice build-up is a washdown cycle.
• Consistent footprints, so nothing jams when iced — see our guide to UK pallet sizes.

It is the difference between a pallet chosen for a freezer and one bought for a warehouse and then sent into one. We do not publish a blanket temperature rating, because the honest answer depends on grade, load and cycle — tell us the coldest point in your process and we will specify against it, as buyers around Enfield and North London do regularly.

What else do buyers ask about freezer pallets?

Where do these figures come from?

Where to go next