UNITED KINGDOM / AGILITYPR.NEWS / August 19, 2026 / Businesses running electric pallet trucks, lift tables and stacker trucks in refrigerated or frozen environments are being urged to pay closer attention to battery performance, as lithium batteries lose both capacity and charge retention in colder temperatures.

Pallet Truck Shop says the issue is often overlooked by operators who assume equipment will perform the same way in a -25°C freezer store as it does on a standard warehouse floor.

Cold storage has become one of the fastest-growing parts of UK warehousing, driven by demand for refrigerated food, drink and pharmaceutical storage. As more of that space is fitted out with electric handling equipment rather than manual alternatives, understanding how batteries behave in these conditions is becoming a genuinely practical concern, not just a technical detail.

Cold temperatures slow the chemical reactions inside a lithium battery, which reduces both the amount of usable charge available and how efficiently that charge is delivered. In practice, this can mean shorter run times between charges, slower charging itself, and batteries that appear to lose capacity more quickly over their working life if they're routinely operated in freezing conditions without any adjustment to charging habits.

Phil Chesworth, Managing Director at Pallet Truck Shop, said, "It catches people out because the equipment still looks and feels the same, it just doesn't perform quite as well. A pallet truck that comfortably does a full shift in a normal warehouse might need charging twice as often once it's working in a blast freezer, and that's before you even think about the impact on battery lifespan over time.

"The good news is that most of this is manageable with a bit of planning. Charging equipment in a warmer area when possible, keeping batteries topped up rather than letting them run right down, and choosing equipment genuinely suited to cold environments in the first place all make a real difference.

"What we'd encourage is for operators to actually ask the question before they buy or lease equipment for a cold store, rather than working it out the hard way once it's already on the floor. Not all electric handling equipment is built with those conditions in mind, and the wrong choice ends up costing more in downtime and battery replacement than it would have done to specify correctly from the start."

To find out more about Pallet Truck Shop, visit: www.pallettruckshop.co.uk.