Cold storage 3PL & pick and pack services in Australia
1 facility lists pick & pack across Australia.
A cold storage 3PL (third-party logistics provider) stores your chilled or frozen stock and runs your orders: receiving, storage, pick and pack, labelling and dispatch to retailers or customers. It suits food and beverage brands, importers and online sellers that want temperature-controlled fulfilment without running their own cold store. This page lists cold storage facilities that state a pick & pack service; filter by city, temperature and pallets to store.
How to choose a cold storage 3PL
- Temperature zones: chilled, frozen or both, and whether orders are picked inside the cold zone or on an ambient floor.
- Order profile: full pallets, cartons or single units, orders per day and your peak weeks.
- Systems: how orders reach the warehouse and how stock levels and expiry dates are reported back to you.
- Fees: the parts of the quote, such as storage per pallet, handling in and out, pick fees and any monthly minimum.
- Dispatch: daily cut-off times, and whether orders leave by refrigerated carrier, courier or your own transport.
Cold store, cold storage 3PL or fulfilment centre?
Three kinds of warehouse can hold stock for you, and they differ in what they do with it.
- What they do: cold store — rents pallet space and handles pallets in and out; cold storage 3PL — stores stock and also picks, packs and dispatches orders; fulfilment centre — picks and ships online orders, so check whether it has chilled or frozen rooms at all.
- Temperature: cold store — chilled and frozen rooms; cold storage 3PL — chilled and frozen rooms, with picking in or next to them; fulfilment centre — ambient unless it states a cold room.
- Order unit: cold store — the pallet; cold storage 3PL — pallets, cartons and single units; fulfilment centre — single units and small parcels.
- How they charge: cold store — storage per pallet plus handling in and out; cold storage 3PL — the same plus pick, packing and dispatch fees; fulfilment centre — per order and per item picked.
Cold storage 3PL by city
Looking for a 3PL in a particular city? These links open cold storage facilities in each capital that list pick & pack. We list temperature-controlled operators; some also handle ambient stock, but this is not a directory of dry-goods 3PLs.
Dispatch from a cold storage 3PL
Orders leave a cold 3PL by refrigerated carrier or courier, or as part of a consolidated load. Refrigerated couriers suit cartons going to shops and homes, and facilities that state cross-docking can combine or split pallets for onward trucks without storing them.
Cold storage 3PL FAQs
What does a cold storage 3PL do?
As a third-party logistics provider, it runs temperature-controlled warehousing for other businesses: it receives chilled or frozen stock, stores it in the right room, picks and packs orders and dispatches them, so the brand does not run its own cold store, staff or refrigeration. You pay for space and handling. On this site, cold stores that state a pick & pack service appear on this page.
Can a cold storage 3PL pick orders inside the cold room?
A facility may pick inside the chilled or frozen room, or bring stock out to a chilled picking area. Ask which applies to your stock: the Australian Cold Chain Guidelines limit how long frozen food may stay out of refrigeration, and they treat ice cream as more heat-sensitive than other frozen food. Check also where picked orders wait for dispatch and whether they are packed with insulation.
Do cold storage 3PLs ship single orders to consumers?
Some do: a cold storage 3PL that serves online food brands picks single units, packs them with insulation and coolant, and hands them to a refrigerated courier or a parcel service. Others work only in pallets and cartons for retailers and food service. Ask about the order unit, the packaging it supplies and the daily cut-off, and check that the profile states pick & pack.
How many pallets do I need before a cold storage 3PL will take my stock?
There is no common threshold: each 3PL sets its own minimum, sometimes as a pallet count and sometimes as a minimum monthly charge. A facility’s minimum storage period and storage terms appear on its card. Tell the 3PL how many pallets you hold, how many orders you send a day and how many items each order has, and ask how its minimum applies to that profile.
What should a cold storage 3PL report back to me?
Stock on hand by product and expiry or batch date, what was received and dispatched each day, and the temperature record of the rooms your stock sits in, which the Australian Cold Chain Guidelines expect every link in the chain to keep. Ask how often reports arrive, whether you can see stock online, and how the 3PL flags short-dated stock, since the guidelines rotate stock first-to-expire, first-out.
To compare every cold store, with or without pick & pack, open cold storage warehouses and facilities across Australia.