A pallet position is one storage slot sized to hold one pallet: a defined width, depth and height in a racking system, or a marked footprint on the floor. It is the unit that logistics contracts are priced in, while property leases are priced in square metres. Most disputes about warehouse capacity are really disputes about the conversion between those two units, and that conversion is not a constant: it moves with the clear height of the hall, the racking type, the width of the aisles and the share of the floor given over to docks and staging rather than to storage.
What one pallet position is
A position is defined by the load it has to hold, not by the steel around it. In continental Europe that load is usually the Euro pallet, and its dimensions are fixed rather than negotiable. According to EPAL, the Euro pallet measures 800 by 1,200 millimetres with a height of 144 millimetres, weighs around 25 kilograms, carries a safe working load of 1,500 kilograms, and exists in more than 650 million examples worldwide. When laden pallets are stacked on a solid, even surface, the bottom pallet must not carry more than 5,500 kilograms.
Around that footprint a position adds clearances: side gaps so a forklift can place the pallet without striking the uprights, a gap above the load for the fork to lift clear of the beam, and depth for any overhang. The industrial pallet of 1,200 by 1,000 millimetres is the second common size and produces a different bay layout, which is why a hall quoted in positions is only comparable to another hall quoted in positions if both are talking about the same pallet.
The height of the load is the third variable and the one most often left out. A position built for a 1.8 metre load and a position built for a 1.2 metre load occupy the same floor area and give different totals for the same building. A quoted number of positions without the assumed pallet size and load height is not a number that can be checked.
How a square metre becomes a pallet position
The conversion runs through three properties of the building. Clear height decides how many levels the racking can carry, floor load capacity decides whether the loads may stand there at all, and the aisle width decides how much of the floor is used for driving rather than storing. That last one is where the biggest differences come from: a counterbalance truck needs a wide aisle, a reach truck less, and a very narrow aisle installation with guided trucks less again, at the price of a floor flatness specification the slab has to meet.
As an order of magnitude, a conventional selective racking layout in a modern hall with reach trucks lands somewhere around 1.3 to 1.6 positions per square metre of gross area, and a very narrow aisle installation goes well above that. Those are figures from our own project work rather than a published measurement, and they move with every change to the aisle, the level heights and the share of the hall given to docks, staging and offices.
The staging area is the part that surprises people. Goods arriving and leaving occupy floor that holds no rack, and the more throughput a building has, the more of it is needed. A cross-docking operation may reach a density near zero positions per square metre and still be the correct use of the building, because its value is in movement rather than storage.
Why the landlord and the logistics provider use different units
A lease prices space. A logistics contract prices service. That is the whole reason the two units exist side by side, and it has a consequence occupiers feel in the first year.
Take the prime rent of EUR 5.30 per square metre per month reported for the second quarter of 2026. At a density of 1.4 positions per square metre that is about EUR 3.79 of rent per position per month, or roughly EUR 45 a year, before service charge, before energy, before racking, before a single hour of labour, and before the question of whether tax sits on that rent at all. Our own arithmetic on a published rent and an assumed density, not a quotation. Its only purpose is to show the size of the gap between a property number and a logistics price, which includes handling, systems, staff and risk.
The gap explains why the two options are hard to compare directly. A 3PL price per position per week already contains the operating cost of the building, and a rent per square metre does not. We set the comparison out in full in the 3PL decision; the point for this entry is narrower, namely that the units have to be converted before any comparison means anything.
What limits the number in a Slovak hall
Four constraints do most of the work, and only one of them is about the racks.
The first is height. Clear height under the lowest obstruction, not the ridge, sets the number of levels, and the usable height stops below the sprinkler heads rather than at the roof. The second is fire engineering: the sprinkler design was calculated for an assumed storage height and commodity class, and raising the storage or changing what is stored can invalidate it. An ESFR sprinkler system is designed around a specific maximum storage height, which is why the fire safety report belongs in the same folder as the racking drawing.
The third is the slab. Floor load capacity has to carry the point loads under the rack uprights, which concentrate far more weight than the average load per square metre suggests, and floor flatness decides whether a narrow aisle installation is possible at all. The fourth is the yard and the docks: a building that can hold 12,000 positions but only turn six trucks at a time is capacity-limited outside the walls, a point that also drives the truck court discussion and the automation question we set out in what robotics change about the building spec.
What to check before a number is agreed
Five questions, all of them answerable before signing. What pallet size and load height does the quoted figure assume? Which racking type and aisle width produced it, and does the slab meet the flatness that type requires? Is the figure gross or net of staging, docks, charging areas and offices? Does the sprinkler design permit that storage height for the goods actually being stored? And is the number a design capacity or a working capacity, given that an operation running at 100 per cent occupancy has nowhere to put an incoming load?
That last distinction is worth more than it looks. Warehouse operations plan around a working occupancy below the theoretical maximum, because every put-away needs somewhere to go and every reshuffle needs an empty slot. A building sized on its design capacity is a building that is full before anybody says so, and the difference is not a rounding error but the buffer that keeps the operation running.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pallet positions fit into 10,000 square metres?
There is no single answer, because the figure depends on clear height, racking type, aisle width and how much floor goes to docks and staging. As an order of magnitude from our project work, a conventional layout in a modern hall lands in the region of 13,000 to 16,000 positions, and a very narrow aisle installation goes higher. Anyone quoting a precise number without stating the assumptions is quoting a wish.
What size is a pallet position?
It is sized around the pallet plus clearances. With a Euro pallet of 800 by 1,200 millimetres, a standard bay usually takes three pallets between uprights, and the level height is the load height plus the beam and the lifting clearance. Change the pallet to 1,200 by 1,000 millimetres and the bay layout changes with it.
Why does my 3PL provider charge per position and my landlord per square metre?
Because they are selling different things. The lease sells space for a term; the logistics contract sells storage and handling as a service, with the building cost inside the price. Comparing the two requires converting one unit into the other and then adding everything the rent does not include.
Does a higher hall always mean more positions?
Only up to the point where something else binds. Additional levels need the sprinkler design to permit the storage height, the slab to carry the point loads and the trucks to reach the top level safely. Height that fails any of those tests adds volume rather than capacity.
Is the number of positions a lease term?
Not usually. A lease lets an area, not a capacity, and a landlord will rarely warrant how many pallets fit inside it. That is why the capacity calculation is the tenant’s risk, and why the assumptions behind it belong in the heads of terms discussion rather than in a supplier’s brochure.