Emirates Supply Chain Services Lahore — multi-temperature 3PL cold store with four zones from −25°C frozen to GDP-compliant pharmaceutical

Third-party logistics is the discipline of holding other companies' products — at the temperature, quality, and traceability standard those clients contractually require — and moving them through the supply chain without incident. Emirates Supply Chain Services, part of the UAE Sharaf Group's Pakistan operations, does this at industrial scale: 16 warehouses, over one million square feet of storage, 60,000 pallet positions, across six Pakistani cities, serving three global FMCG companies by name.

The cold-chain infrastructure at the Lahore HQ on 46 km Multan Road is the most complex part of that operation. It is not one cold store — it is four thermally distinct environments inside one building, each with its own refrigeration circuit, its own temperature-monitoring regime, and its own access discipline. Izhar Foster designed and built the FireSafe PIR envelope, refrigeration plant, insulated doors, and SCADA monitoring infrastructure that makes it work.

Four zones, one envelope

The engineering challenge that defines a multi-temperature 3PL cold store is this: every zone must hold its temperature independently, the zones must be thermally isolated from each other without a gap in the building envelope, and the whole must be maintainable by a single site engineering team. Emirates Logistics Lahore has four zones:

Zone 1 — Frozen FMCG (−18 to −25°C). The largest zone by volume, storing frozen consumer goods — confectionery, ready meals, frozen vegetables, ice cream — for the FMCG clients. Storage at −18°C is the international minimum for frozen food; at −25°C, the facility can serve clients with stricter hold-temperature requirements, including imported products that have been shipped at −22 to −25°C. The refrigeration plant for this zone is an ammonia rack with ceiling-mounted evaporators and hot-gas or electric defrost, sized for Lahore's 45°C summer ambient using Izhar Foster's ASHRAE-based load calculation methodology with 2.7%/K ambient derate above 35°C on low-temperature duty.

Zone 2 — Chiller (dairy, produce, +2 to +4°C). Fresh and chilled products — dairy, fresh produce, meat — held at +2 to +4°C. This zone sees the highest product throughput on a per-pallet basis; chilled product has a short shelf life and moves quickly. The refrigeration for this zone is a medium-temperature HFC or ammonia circuit (depending on zone size), with evaporators selected for minimum air-speed to avoid desiccating fresh produce. The insulated partition between this zone and the frozen zone at −25°C must be engineered for a 29 K temperature differential — a significant structural and thermal load on the PIR panel joinery.

Zone 3 — GDP-compliant pharmaceutical (+2/+8°C). This is the zone that separates a sophisticated 3PL operator from a generic warehousing company. Pharmaceutical products — vaccines, biologics, temperature-sensitive medicines — arrive at Lahore from Allama Iqbal International Airport, received by Emirates Logistics as part of the airport-linked pharmaceutical import chain, and held in this zone pending distribution to dispensaries, hospitals, and distributors. GDP compliance under DRAP and WHO TRS 961 Annex 9 means the zone is not merely cold — it is validated, monitored, alarmed, and documented to pharmaceutical regulatory standard.

Zone 4 — Ambient-controlled grocery (+15/+25°C). Ambient-controlled storage for shelf-stable grocery products that nonetheless require temperature protection: chocolate (anti-bloom), coffee (condensation prevention), spices (oxidation retardation). This zone is mechanically cooled rather than refrigerated, served by a DX split system or chilled-water AHU, and maintains temperature and relative humidity within the specified band year-round including in Lahore's 45°C summer. The PIR envelope here is thinner than the frozen zone but still necessary — without it, passive heat gain through the building skin during summer would exceed any practical mechanical cooling budget.

Panel joinery engineering at zone transitions

The most technically demanding element of a multi-temperature cold store is not the refrigeration plant — it is the envelope joinery at zone transitions. Where a −25°C frozen zone shares a partition wall with a +4°C chiller, the PIR panel must manage a 29 K differential across its thickness, and every penetration through that wall — electrical conduits, refrigerant pipework, data cables, drainage — must be vapour-sealed to prevent moisture migration into the panel structure.

Vapour pressure is higher on the warm side. Without a continuous vapour barrier on the +4°C face of the partition, moisture migrates by diffusion through the panel, reaching its dew point within the insulation and condensing. Over months and years, this condensation saturates the PIR foam, dramatically reducing its thermal conductivity, and corrodes the steel facers from the inside. The result is a panel that looks intact from the outside but has lost 30–50% of its insulation value internally — and which will eventually delaminate without warning.

Izhar Foster's design approach for the Emirates Logistics partition walls includes: PIR-filled panel joints with no metal-to-metal thermal bridges; vapour-sealed penetration collars on every pipe and conduit (closed-cell foam collar, taped at the panel face); heated baseplate strips where the partition meets the floor slab, preventing freeze-condensation at the panel foot; and a dew-point analysis for every wall assembly run at the specified design temperatures before construction begins. These are not optional enhancements — they are engineering prerequisites for a 20-year partition wall life.

At the zone-transition door openings, insulated rapid-slide doors are specified: they minimise the open time during forklift passes, reducing infiltration load, and their multi-stage perimeter gaskets maintain the vapour seal when closed. Where pedestrian access between zones is frequent, air-lock lobbies with sequential-interlocked doors prevent simultaneous opening, which would short-circuit the thermal separation entirely.

GDP pharmaceutical zone — engineering to WHO TRS 961

The pharmaceutical zone is the element of the Emirates Logistics project that requires the most rigorous engineering discipline, and the one where the gap between a real GDP-qualified cold store and a merely cold room is widest.

WHO Technical Report Series 961 Annex 9 — the international standard for pharmaceutical distribution — requires that a cold storage facility for +2/+8°C medicines:

• Maintains temperature within the validated range at all sensor positions under loaded and unloaded conditions, as demonstrated by a temperature-mapping study conducted pre-commissioning and at periodic re-validation intervals.
• Has calibrated temperature sensors with traceable calibration records, replaced or re-calibrated on an annual schedule.
• Operates a continuous monitoring system — SCADA or data logger — that records at intervals of 10 minutes or less, retains data for at least the shelf life of the longest-dated product plus two years, and can produce records in an audit-ready format.
• Has alarm notification that activates within 30 minutes of a temperature excursion, persists through grid power failure for a minimum of four hours (UPS-backed), and reaches the responsible person by phone or SMS.
• Has defined SOPs for temperature excursion response, product segregation during excursion, and quarantine pending quality assessment.

The SCADA system Izhar Foster specified for the Emirates Logistics pharma zone meets all of these requirements. Sensors are positioned at the validated worst-case locations identified during temperature mapping (typically high corners and door-adjacent positions, where the coldest and warmest readings occur under loaded conditions). A redundant data logger runs in parallel with the SCADA system, providing a secondary record that is independent of the SCADA software and its potential for data corruption.

The airport pharmaceutical import link adds a further requirement. Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore is a major pharmaceutical import point — vaccines, biologics, and temperature-sensitive medicines arrive by air from Europe and the Middle East. WHO TRS 961 requires a qualified receiving cold room at the airport logistics interface: a +2/+8°C room where product can be placed immediately on arrival from the aircraft hold, documented as compliant with the unbroken cold-chain requirement, and held pending customs clearance. Emirates Logistics' relationship with Izhar Foster on the cold room engineering extends to this airport receiving function.

Scope Izhar Foster delivered

Zone	Temperature	Key specification
Frozen FMCG	−18 to −25°C	NH₃ rack, ceiling evaporators, hot-gas defrost
Chiller (dairy/produce)	+2 to +4°C	Medium-temp refrigeration, low-velocity evaporators
GDP pharma	+2/+8°C validated	SCADA logging, 4-hr UPS alarms, temperature mapping, WHO TRS 961
Ambient-controlled	+15/+25°C	DX cooling + PIR envelope, RH control
Panel (frozen zone)	FireSafe PIR B1	λ = 0.022 W/m·K, vapour-sealed joints
Zone partitions	PIR with vapour seal	Heated baseplates, closed-cell penetration collars
Doors	Rapid-slide insulated	Multi-gasket, sequential airlock lobbies at key transitions
Monitoring	SCADA + redundant data logger	10-min intervals, SMS alarm, 4-hr UPS backup

Why Emirates Logistics chose Izhar Foster

Emirates Supply Chain Services operates to global FMCG and pharmaceutical client standards — its contracts with global brands specify storage conditions, monitoring requirements, and audit access that a Pakistani warehousing company without genuine GDP engineering capability cannot meet. The selection of Izhar Foster for the Lahore cold-store build was not a price decision alone; it was a capability evaluation. Can the contractor design a validated pharmaceutical cold room to WHO TRS 961 standard? Can they specify a SCADA system that produces GDP-audit-ready records? Can they engineer a −25°C to +4°C partition wall that will hold its thermal performance for 20 years without vapour damage?

The answer in each case is the same: Izhar Foster's engineering team has done it before, has the calculation records to show how it was designed, and has the in-house PIR panel manufacturing capability — at the 277,460 sqft Lahore plant — to execute it without dependence on import lead times or third-party panel quality.

If you are scoping a multi-temperature 3PL cold store, a GDP-compliant pharmaceutical cold room, or a airport pharmaceutical receiving facility in Pakistan, request a quote with your zone temperatures, floor area, and city. Our engineers respond within 24 hours. You can also size the refrigeration load interactively with our cold room heat load calculator.