What size pallet do cold stores use?

There is no special cold storage pallet. Cold stores take the pallet the goods arrive on, so the size is the region’s standard: in Europe the 1200 × 800 mm Euro pallet and the 1200 × 1000 mm industrial pallet, in North America 48 × 40 in (1219 × 1016 mm), and in parts of Asia 1100 × 1100 or 1200 × 1000 mm. All are among the six standard pallet sizes in ISO 6780.

What the store limits is height and weight. Rack beams in a cold store are set when the store is built, and every pallet place has a fixed clear height and load. So a store defines its “standard pallet” by maximum height and gross weight, and may charge more for pallets above it or refuse them. One published rate card, from a frozen-food wholesaler in Johor, Malaysia, defines its pallet as 1.2 × 1.2 m footprint, 1.5 m high, 800 kg to 1 t. Ask for the store’s figures before the goods are palletised: a pallet built to 1.80 m for transport may not fit a 1.50 m rack level.

Weight varies by product more than by store. Frozen boxed meat and fries run to 850–1,150 kg a pallet; ice cream and frozen bakery 270–500 kg. A Euro pallet’s safe working load is 1,500 kg, an industrial pallet’s 1,250 kg, so dense frozen goods can reach the pallet’s limit before the height limit.

Plan the pallets with Pallet build, which takes a height cap and a weight limit; plan the room with the cold store tool. Which rack to put them in: Cold storage racking. Related: What is a Euro pallet?, What is a pallet position?

Sources

• ISO 6780:2003, Tables 1 and 2.
• KHL Group, Johor, Cold storage rental: pallet 1,500 mm high × 1,200 × 1,200 mm, 800 kg to 1 t. Read 2026-11-06.
• Pallet weights by product: operator and supplier figures collected for the cold store tool (vendor data, indicative).
• Safe working loads: EPAL data sheets for EPAL 1 and EPAL 2.