For cold chain and frozen storage
Counting stock in a freezer, without sending anyone into it.
A global pharmaceutical manufacturer now counts a full warehouse spanning dry, ambient and frozen zones down to minus 23 degrees, in under four hours, with one employee. Nobody makes a single trip up a scissor lift to read a high location.
Why cold storage is a different problem
Everything that makes a normal stocktake slow gets worse in a cold store.
A frozen or chilled warehouse is not just a colder version of an ambient one. Labour costs more, regulatory limits on cold exposure are real, and the racking is often taller because floor space below minus 20 degrees is expensive to build.
- Labour costs more in the cold, and regulation limits exposure time. Stocktaking already slow and labour intensive in an ambient warehouse is worst in cold storage, where wage premiums and safety rules both push against long manual counts.
- Staff move between zones repeatedly during a shift. A building holding dry, ambient and frozen stock down to minus 23 degrees means rapid transitions, and a manual count is exactly the task that gets rushed under that pressure.
- Reading a high location has meant a scissor lift. Raising a person to racking height to read a label is a standing safety exposure, worse where surfaces ice over.
- Counting takes people away from picking during a peak. Cold chain operations often run tighter shift patterns, so a count needing three to ten people for two to three days is a bigger hit than it looks on paper.
Why the usual automation answers struggle here
Drones and fixed infrastructure are built for a different building.
Most inventory automation was designed for ambient warehouses and then adapted for the cold. A camera that already rides on a forklift you own does not need adapting, because it never has to survive the freezer on its own.
Built for an ambient aisle
Flight through a dense, tall, frozen aisle is a poor fit for a vehicle built for an ambient distribution centre.
Condensation is the enemy
Cameras and RFID readers fixed in a cold store have to survive condensation every time a door opens between zones, on hardware nobody pulls out and dries between shifts.
The camera only visits
The recording unit rides on a forklift already rated for the cold store, for the length of a run, then leaves with the forklift. Nothing is left behind to ice over.
Drone endurance, aisle density and the cases where flight is the better fit are compared on automated stocktaking against inventory drones.
The operator never leaves the cab
Because the recording unit rides on the forklift, the person counting stays exactly where they already are, in the driver's seat, for as long as a normal pass down the aisle takes. Nobody is raised to racking height on a scissor lift, and nobody spends longer standing in the frozen zone than the forklift needs to drive through it.
The camera reads every pallet label and registers every location, including the empty ones, at normal travel speed. In 20 minutes it covers 500 to 1,000 pallets, which in a cold store is time a driver was already spending in that aisle, not time added to the day. Results are reconciled against the WMS automatically, and every discrepancy carries the recording that found it.
Same unit, cold or regulated. A cold store handling pharmaceutical or biotech stock carries compliance requirements on top of the temperature ones. See stocktaking for biotech and pharma for batch traceability and audit evidence, and the recording unit for what the hardware actually is.
Measured in cold storage and food
Two sites, two temperature regimes, both live.
| Location | Pallet locations | Accuracy after go live | Sector | Value realised | Break even |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geel, Belgium | 7,000 | 99.99%+ | Pharma | 85% lower stocktaking cost, alignment with safety regulation | 6+ months |
| Kolding, Denmark | 25,000 | 99%+ | Food | 80% lower stocktaking cost, 80% fewer loading errors | 6 months |
Reading a label from the cab of a forklift costs less than reading it from a scissor lift, and it is the only one of the two that needs no risk assessment signed against it.
The operating range and the storage range are not the same. The unit operates down to minus 20 °C, and down to minus 30 °C for up to an hour at a time, but it must not be stored below freezing: the storage range is 0 °C to plus 40 °C. That is why the unit comes back out to a tempered area between runs, which is where it charges anyway. The parking spot and the routine are agreed during the five day deployment, and if your store holds colder than minus 30 °C, say so on the first call, because that is outside what the current unit is specified for.
Minus 23 degrees is the coldest zone measured on a live deployment, at the pharmaceutical site that counts dry, ambient and frozen stock in one building. It sits inside the one hour excursion range rather than inside the continuous rating, which is exactly how that site runs it: an aisle pass, then out.
Questions we get asked
Before you run this in a freezer.
Does the equipment work reliably at minus 23 degrees?
Yes. The unit is rated to minus 20 °C and operates down to minus 30 °C for up to an hour at a time, so an aisle pass at minus 23 sits inside what it is specified for. A live pharmaceutical site counts stock across dry, ambient and frozen zones down to minus 23 degrees in the same building, using the same recording unit for all three. The one thing to plan is where the unit lives between runs, because storage below freezing is outside its range.
Do we need to keep someone in the cold for the whole count?
No. The operator stays in the forklift cab for the length of a normal aisle pass, which is what let one employee scan an entire multi zone warehouse in under four hours without a scissor lift trip.
Why not use a drone instead?
Flight through a dense, tall frozen aisle is a poor fit for an autonomous flying vehicle. A camera on a forklift that already works the cold store is in the cold only for the length of a run, then leaves with the forklift. The full comparison is on the inventory drones page.
Does condensation between temperature zones damage the equipment?
The recording unit only enters the cold for the length of a run and returns with the forklift afterwards, so it avoids the condensation cycles fixed cameras bolted into the racking sit through. Rated operating humidity is 80% maximum. Between runs the unit is parked and charged in a tempered area above freezing, which is what the 0 °C storage limit requires in any case.
Next step
See a frozen zone counted, not described.
A 30 minute demo using recordings from a cold store with your racking, your label format and your temperature zones.