I was recently lucky enough to have had a tour of a warehouse facility of a major UK retailer. As we walked around, during the UK’s second heatwave of the summer, what struck me was how the heat was impacting operations within the warehouse.

Occupiers are now asking a question that would have seemed remote just a decade ago: are our warehouses fit for extreme heat? With temperatures now regularly breaching the mid thirties and recurring days of above 40 no longer implausible, the answer for much of the UK's logistics stock is a candid "not really".

Existing strategies  

Traditional British "big box" specifications are optimised to keep warmth in, not to shed it. That thinking must now flex. Learning from hotter climates in southern Europe, the Middle East and Australia and the USA, UK specifications will increasingly borrow proven strategies: high-albedo "cool" roof coatings, deeper overshading, orientation-led glazing, and thermal mass in slabs and dock walls to buffer peak-day temperatures. Even relatively simple considerations, such as keeping dock doors closed to reduce heat entering, installing spot-coolers where workers are concentrated, such as packing areas and break rooms, and providing employees with extra water and more breaks throughout the shift, can together make a notable difference. 

Technological solutions

But technology has a growing role. High-Volume, Low-Speed (HVLS) ceiling fans — of the type deployed at scale in US distribution centres — can reduce perceived temperatures by around 5°C for a fraction of the cost of full mechanical cooling. Automatically controlled roof vents harness the stack effect to purge hot air overnight, while dynamic (transpiration) wall cladding allows insulation performance to modulate with external conditions, drawing cooler air through the envelope rather than trapping heat.

The challenge will sharpen further as automation intensifies. Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS), Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and conveyors generate significant internal heat loads, and both people and machines have operational tipping points — lithium-ion batteries derate above roughly 35°C, and human picker productivity falls sharply beyond 30°C. With current electricity prices making active cooling an extreme option, the smart specification is passive-first: reflective roofs, natural ventilation, HVLS airflow and adaptive cladding, with mechanical cooling reserved for the automation zones that truly need it.

Very little data exists to establish how much of the UK warehouse stock has measures in place to protect from extreme heat. However, investors and developers will need to be increasingly mindful of how extreme heat could impact occupier thinking in the future and what the impact will be on future warehouse design and the value of existing assets.

Further information

Contact Kevin Mofid

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