Pallet vs Square-Meter Medical Storage

Pallet-position rental

You pay for each pallet position occupied. This suits palletised stock with small or fluctuating volumes — for example importers whose holdings rise and fall with shipments. Cost tracks your actual holding, so you are not paying for empty space.

Square-meter rental

You rent a dedicated, configurable area measured in square meters. This suits larger volumes, non-standard items or ongoing operations that benefit from a fixed, controllable footprint.

Which to choose

If your stock is palletised and variable, start with pallet positions. If you hold larger or bespoke volumes, or want a dedicated space, choose square meters. The two are not mutually exclusive over time — a common path is to begin on pallets and graduate to an area as volumes stabilise. SFIMS can advise based on your product mix and turnover.

Working out how many pallet positions you need

Most people either guess this or take it from their current shelf space, and both produce the wrong answer. Work it up instead:

• Cartons per pallet for each product, at the stacking height the goods actually tolerate rather than the height the rack allows.
• Peak stock holding per line, not average, converted into pallets.
• Round up per line. Two lines rarely share a pallet position in a batch-controlled operation, so part pallets still occupy a whole position.
• Split by temperature band, because chilled and ambient are priced separately.
• Add for batch separation. The same product in three batches may need three positions.
• Add a working allowance for receiving, staging and picking.

The batch separation point is the one that surprises people. An operation holding many lines in small quantities uses far more positions than a simple volume calculation suggests.

Where square-metre pricing catches people out

Square-metre rental looks simpler and sometimes is, but it carries assumptions worth surfacing before signing:

Height may or may not be included. A floor area is two-dimensional; whether you may stack into the space above it, and to what height, is a separate question.

Aisles and access. Whether the measured area includes the space needed to reach the stock makes a substantial difference to what you can actually store.

Racking. Whether it is provided, and whether you may install your own, changes both cost and usable capacity.

Shape. An awkward area is worth less than its measurement suggests.

Square metres suit loose, irregular or non-palletised goods. Pallet positions suit uniform, racked, batch-controlled stock. Most pharmaceutical operations fall into the second category, which is why pallet pricing dominates the sector.

Mixed arrangements and overflow

The two models are not mutually exclusive, and the practical answer is often both. A common arrangement is pallet positions for the core racked holding, plus a floor area for goods that do not palletise well — bulky devices, irregular packaging, promotional material.

Overflow deserves its own conversation. Volumes arrive in lumps, and the month a container lands is the month the calculation fails. Ask what happens when you exceed your contracted positions: whether additional space is available at short notice, what it costs, and whether it is in the same temperature band. A facility that can absorb a peak without a renegotiation is worth more than one whose headline rate is slightly lower.