How to use this peak season to plan 2027 fulfilment capacity

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The 2026 peak season is the best evidence your operation will have for planning peak 2027 capacity. According to the Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026, released in March 2026, Australians spent a record $82.6 billion online in 2025, up 14% on the year before. In November 2025, the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) and Roy Morgan forecast a record $6.8 billion for the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend alone.

Operators who record the right numbers between Click Frenzy and Boxing Day can make their space decisions for peak 2027 on evidence. Without that record, the decisions rest on memory.

Why this peak is for measurement

A mezzanine cannot be designed, approved, fabricated and installed before this peak. Black Friday falls on 27 November 2026 and Cyber Monday on 30 November, only weeks away.

The most valuable action this month is deciding what to measure and who records it. Start with a baseline week in October, before volumes climb, so every peak figure can be compared against normal trading.

Capacity signals to record during peak

Record five signals from the start of Click Frenzy to the end of Boxing Day trading. Australia Post lists the Click Frenzy Main Event for 12 November 2026.

Signal	What to record	Frequency and unit	What it shows
Pick face congestion	Picker wait time and aisle blockages	Per shift, minutes and count	Whether pick areas are too dense
Pack bench queue times	Time from pick completion to pack start	Per shift, minutes per order	Whether packing capacity is short
Overflow stock locations	Pallets or cartons held outside slotted locations, and where	Daily, pallet count	How much space is missing
Dock and staging overflow	Staging lane overflow and trailers waiting	Daily, hours and count	Whether outbound space is short
Temporary labour and overtime	Extra headcount and overtime hours	Weekly, people and hours	What congestion costs in labour

Photograph overflow locations at the same time each day. A photo record shows exactly where space ran out.

Which bottlenecks a mezzanine can solve

Each bottleneck needs a cause before it needs a solution, because some peak problems are floor area shortages and others are process problems.

Symptom	Likely cause	Floor area problem?	Better response
Growing pack bench queues	No room to add benches	Yes	Move or add pack benches on a mezzanine
Consumables blocking aisles	No dedicated storage	Yes	Store consumables on a mezzanine
Slow movers occupying ground-level pick faces	Slotting and space	Partly	Move slow movers up and reslot fast movers
Crowded amenities with temporary staff	Amenity space	Yes	Amenities on a mezzanine
Pickers waiting in fast-moving aisles	Slotting or wave planning	No	Reslot and adjust pick waves
Trailers queuing at the dock	Carrier scheduling	No	Booked carrier slots and staging rules

Pack benches, consumables, slow-moving pick faces and amenities are the problems a mezzanine solves. Picking and dock queues usually need process or automation changes.

Plan in cubic metres, not square metres

Plan capacity in cubic metres because most fulfilment floors use only the bottom few metres of a building’s clear height. That matters while leasing extra space stays difficult. CBRE reported national industrial and logistics vacancy of 3.2% in its first-half 2026 report, released in July 2026, and expects it to stay below 4%.

As an illustrative example, a 1,000 m² packing zone under a 10 m clear height holds 10,000 m³ of space. If packing activity uses the bottom 3 m, around 70% of that volume sits empty. A mezzanine over the same zone puts that unused height to work.

To size the gap, convert peak overflow into volume. If overflow averaged 120 Australian standard pallets (1165 x 1165 mm) a day, that is around 163 m² of floor before aisles. Use the Unistor warehouse efficiency calculators to test your own figures.

Turn peak data into a mezzanine brief

Peak data becomes a mezzanine brief once it answers four questions:

Required area. How many square metres of pack benches, consumables, slow-moving stock or amenities need to move up a level.
Floor load class. What the deck must carry, expressed in kilopascals (kPa) under AS/NZS 1170.1 [verify with Unistor engineering].
Goods movement between levels. Whether stairs, pallet gates, lifts or conveyors move stock and cartons between levels.
Conveyor interface points. Where conveyors cross or land on the structure, which affects column positions and deflection limits.

See how fulfilment centres separate pick, pack and dispatch across levels and how conveyor support structures integrate with a mezzanine.

Work back from peak 2027

The new level needs to be installed and certified before the peak 2027 build-up begins in October. That points to an indicative project start by the end of March 2027.

Period	Milestone
January 2027	Analyse peak data against the baseline week
February 2027	Site measure, concept layout and capital case
March 2027	Design freeze and budget approval
April to May 2027	Engineering and approval
June to July 2027	Fabrication and finishing
July to August 2027	Installation, phased around trading
September 2027	Certification, handover and reslotting

Approval requirements vary by state and council. Confirm the pathway for your site with a registered certifier.

Compare temporary space with a permanent mezzanine

Compare both options as a cost per cubic metre per year rather than a single peak bill.

Temporary responses carry costs that recur every peak:

Overflow storage fees
Shuttle transport between sites
Double handling of stock
3PL overflow charges

A mezzanine carries a one-off capital cost spread over the years you expect to occupy the site. A mezzanine floor cost depends on area, load class and access requirements.

A temporary arrangement is the stronger choice when a spike is one-off, demand is uncertain or a lease ends soon. Unistor mezzanines can also be dismantled and reinstalled, which reduces the risk of a shorter lease.

Plan peak 2027 with Unistor

Bring your peak data to Unistor in January, and the team will help you turn it into a sized, costed brief for peak 2027. A specialist will review your bottleneck records, confirm which problems more floor area can solve and map the project dates needed to finish before the build-up begins. Send an enquiry, or call 1300 137 220.