Cold storage Lahore — designed, manufactured, and installed from our Multan Road plant.

Refrigeration sizing for 48°C ambient

The most common cold storage engineering mistake in Lahore is sizing refrigeration to the manufacturer's catalogue rating — which is typically stated at +32°C or +35°C ambient. At Lahore's summer peak of 46–48°C, a medium-temperature system loses approximately 2.0% of net cooling capacity per Kelvin above its rated ambient, and a low-temperature system loses 2.7%/K. A system sized at +35°C will deliver only 78–84% of rated capacity at +47°C ambient — and this is before accounting for compressor discharge temperature limits and condenser pressure rise.

Izhar Foster sizes every Lahore refrigeration plant to deliver its rated capacity at the actual summer design point. We use ASHRAE Refrigeration Handbook Ch. 35 condenser sizing methodology with Pakistan-specific derate factors, cross-validated against Bitzer Software and Heatcraft NROES for every project.

Generator integration and soft-starter logic

LESCO's industrial supply in Lahore's manufacturing zones — Sundar, Quaid-e-Azam Industrial Estate, Raiwind Road, Multan Road, Kot Lakhpat — is materially more reliable than residential supply, but still subject to load-shedding and voltage sag events. For cold stores where product loss during an extended outage would be commercially significant (pharmaceutical cold rooms, blast freezers holding high-value protein), we design generator integration as part of the base scope: automatic transfer switch, rated genset sizing including compressor inrush current, and load-shedding alarm integration that alerts on-site staff before temperatures drift out of specification.

Soft starters on compressors protect against the voltage sag that occurs when LESCO supply is restored after a cut — the inrush current without a soft starter can trigger upstream fuses or damage compressor windings on the fifth or sixth restart in a single day during summer load-shedding peaks.

Panel thickness selection for Punjab summers

At 46–48°C ambient on the outer face, a cold store running at −20°C inside has a 66–68°C delta-T across the panel. Panel thickness selection must account for this full thermal gradient. For a −20°C freezer in Lahore, our standard minimum panel specification is 100 mm PIR (U = 0.19 W/m²K). Blast freezers at −35°C or below in Lahore typically specify 150 mm (U = 0.13 W/m²K). Under-specified panels cost less upfront but cost more in electricity every year for the life of the facility — and at LESCO's commercial tariff of approximately PKR 41–44/kWh, the payback on thicker panels in Lahore is typically under 3 years.

Condensate and drainage design

Lahore's summer humidity, while lower than Karachi's, still creates condensate management requirements at cold room doors and on evaporator drains. Door frame heaters are standard on all freezer rooms. Evaporator drain lines must be trace-heated and routed to drains rather than dumped to a tray that re-freezes. For blast freezers, defrost cycle scheduling must account for the high ambient — overnight defrost when ambient drops to 30–35°C typically yields faster defrost and lower energy use than mid-day defrost at 48°C ambient.