Sharaf Logistics, Lahore — 50-ft high-bay 3PL freezer with wind-loaded PIR envelope and top-tie ammonia evaporators

At 15.2 m of clear internal height, the Sharaf Logistics cold store on Lahore's Multan Road belt sits in a different engineering category from a standard 7–10 m facility. The height is not decorative — it directly multiplies pallet-position yield per square metre of the footprint, which is the core commercial logic of high-bay 3PL warehousing. But every metre above 10 m introduces structural, thermal, and mechanical challenges that require active engineering decisions, not rule-of-thumb application of standard cold-store practice.

Emirates Supply Chain Services (Pvt.) Ltd. brings the operational rigour of the UAE's Sharaf Group to Pakistan's 3PL market — 16 warehouses across 6 cities, over 1 million square feet of total storage, and 60,000+ pallet positions serving multinational FMCG principals and hypermarket chains. At a scale like this, a vendor selection for the cold store envelope and refrigeration plant is a strategic decision, not a procurement exercise. Izhar Foster was selected to deliver this installation on a full turnkey basis from our Lahore manufacturing facility.

What 50-ft height actually demands from the building envelope

The PIR sandwich panel envelope on a 50-ft building is not the same product as the envelope on a 25-ft building, even if the panel thickness and λ value are identical. The governing difference is wind load. At 15 m eave height on the Multan Road belt — open agricultural terrain with negligible upstream obstruction — the peak cladding suction pressure on the leeward wall is substantially higher than on a standard-height warehouse. Izhar Foster's structural engineers calculate the panel spanning requirement to BCP (Building Code of Pakistan) loading tables, with the facing steel gauge and joint fastener pattern specified per the actual suction load map.

A secondary wind-load consideration at this height is the panel-to-panel joint under dynamic loading. Long-term cyclical wind loading on a tall building can cause progressive joint gap opening if the joint detail relies on compression-only contact. Izhar Foster's proprietary joint profile uses a positive mechanical interlock that maintains the thermal bridge-free joint geometry under both positive and suction loading. The result is an airtight, condensation-free joint at the −25°C internal face, regardless of the wind state outside.

Refrigeration engineering at −25°C in a 45°C Lahore summer

Running a −25°C freezer in Lahore's 45°C July ambient is thermodynamically punishing. The temperature differential across the refrigeration circuit — from the −30°C evaporation temperature required to achieve −25°C room air, through to the condensing temperature forced by 45°C+ ambient — drives the compressor into a pressure ratio that a single-stage reciprocating or screw machine cannot sustain at rated efficiency. Izhar Foster specifies either two-stage ammonia compression or flash-intercooled single-stage for low-temperature applications in Pakistan's northern cities, to maintain a safe and efficient operating envelope across the full seasonal ambient swing.

The condenser sizing follows ASHRAE Refrigeration Handbook methodology, derated for Pakistan ambient: 2.7%/K capacity loss per degree above design on LT applications, with a hard floor of 60% rated capacity at extreme ambient. For the Sharaf Logistics freezer, this means the condenser was selected at a capacity that delivers adequate rejection at 47°C — not the 35°C figure that a European equipment catalogue might assume. Under-specify the condenser and the plant staggers through every Lahore summer; over-specify the compressor and the operating cost is needlessly high. Getting this balance right is the central refrigeration engineering challenge on a LT facility in Punjab.

Top-tie evaporator mounting at altitude

At 15 m ceiling height, each ceiling-mounted ammonia evaporator is a mass of 400–800 kg suspended above valuable inventory. The vibration from multiple fan motors — typically four to six per unit on a high-capacity industrial evaporator — is transmitted through the mounting system to the building structure. A simple ceiling-hung configuration using threaded rod is entirely adequate at 5–7 m; at 15 m, the dynamic moment at the ceiling fixing point is an order of magnitude larger, and the PIR ceiling panels are not structural elements that can absorb shear.

Izhar Foster designs top-tie bracket systems for high-bay evaporator installations — structural steel frames bolted to the main building frame at the purlin level, with flexible vibration-isolation mounts between the bracket and the evaporator body. This arrangement keeps the dynamic loads out of the PIR ceiling panels entirely, prevents progressive fastener loosening over plant life, and maintains the geometric integrity of the evaporator-to-ceiling gap that defrost air circulation depends on.

Defrost scheduling at 15 m height requires additional attention. Warm, moist air rises and stratifies at the ceiling. In a tall building, the ceiling layer temperature can be several degrees warmer than the −25°C room air — which means frost accumulates faster on the top face of the evaporator fins than in an equivalent lower-height room. Izhar Foster's control logic accounts for this by shortening defrost intervals and running post-defrost fan purge cycles to flush the stratified warm air layer before it re-freezes on the evaporator surfaces. The outcome is sustained evaporator performance over the full operating year without manual intervention.

Why Pakistan's 3PL cold-chain sector is growing — and why high-bay capacity is the bottleneck

Pakistan's modern 3PL sector is expanding rapidly, driven by multinational FMCG companies entering the market or scaling existing Pakistan operations, hypermarket chains with centralised distribution requirements, pharmaceutical distributors requiring temperature-controlled chain-of-custody, and export processors needing bonded cold storage at or near Lahore's logistics belt. All of these demand facilities that meet international standards — not the single-temperature, single-client cold stores that were the norm in Pakistan until the 2010s.

High-bay is the natural response to land costs on the Multan Road and Ferozepur Road belts, where warehousing land per square metre is expensive and zoning limits footprint expansion. A 50-ft building on the same footprint as a 25-ft building roughly doubles the pallet position count — with Izhar Foster's engineering absorbing the incremental structural and mechanical complexity that the additional height creates.

Sharaf Logistics's 60,000+ pallet-position network across six Pakistani cities represents the kind of 3PL infrastructure that FMCG multinationals require before committing to Pakistan distribution. The Multan Road cold store is the refrigerated anchor of that network — the facility that makes temperature-sensitive FMCG distribution at national scale possible. Izhar Foster is proud to have delivered its cold envelope and refrigeration plant.

If you are planning a high-bay cold store — whether 3PL, FMCG-owned, or pharmaceutical — start with our cold room heat load calculator, where you can model a −18°C or −25°C room with a Pakistan city climate and get a sized refrigeration estimate. Then request a quote with your floor area, height, and location. Our engineers will assess the structural, wind-load, and refrigeration implications and respond within 24 hours.

Specification context — high-bay 3PL freezer, Lahore

Parameter	Sharaf Logistics specification range
Operating temperature	−18°C to −25°C (multi-zone capable)
Clear internal height	15.2 m (50 ft)
Ambient design DB (Lahore)	47°C (ASHRAE 0.4% + Pakistan +2 K uplift)
Panel — wall and roof	FireSafe PIR, wind-load engineered; ≥150 mm at −25°C
Panel λ value	0.022 W/m·K (BS EN 14509 aged)
Refrigerant	Ammonia (NH₃) — zero GWP, zero ODP
Compression	Two-stage or flash-intercooled screw at LT
Evaporator mounting	Top-tie bracket system with vibration isolation
Defrost	Scheduled + demand, with post-defrost stratification purge
Racking	Rack-supported structure or freestanding high-bay, coordinated with building engineer
Power	Generator-backed, soft-start staging, UPS on controls