Food Industry Flooring

The intricate world of the food & beverage industry consists of an almost endless number of processes, plants, mechanisms, routines, tests and operations. While there are common factors that unite them all, the challenges faced by each F&B facility can drastically vary.

For example, the demands that a craft beer brewery will face are going to be very different to that of a fishery and a confectioner is going to have to take into account different environmental concerns compared to a dairy farm.

To make sure that each part of every facility can continue to function, it’s important to consider all the operational parameters during the site’s design, build, maintenance and refurbishment stages. Doing this properly means that regardless of the specific onsite challenges, whether it’s corrosive sugary solutions, the low temperature of fresh fish storage or the movement of a herd of cattle, the site in question will continually perform at its best.

Getting the floor right is central to this, as if the finish starts to deteriorate then it could put the facility at risk from a number of contamination, safety and productivity issues. Flowcrete UK has developed its Flowfresh range of antibacterial enhanced, polyurethane coatings to provide food & beverage producers with a high performance, long lasting surface that will withstand the impacts, chemicals, substances, temperatures, workload and weights wherever it is installed.

The versatility of Flowfresh means that it can be tailored to different working conditions to ensure that the floor is optimised for the facility and ready for the tasks at hand. The thickness, pitch, colour as well as key cleanability characteristics such as coving and drainage can all be adjusted to best suit each site’s specific operations.

Crucial safety features such as the floor’s slip resistance can even be adjusted to best suit the liquids and substances likely to fall onto the ground. To achieve this, anti-slip aggregates are broadcast into the resin system to create a textured finish that actively enhances traction underfoot.

It is important to balance the level of slip resistance with the onsite cleaning regime, as a more textured finish can be slower and trickier to clean than a smoother coating. Getting this combination of safety and cleanability just right is vital in large-scale food industry plants, where it’s possible for the slip resistance requirements to change from room to room!

Businesses undertaking a refurbishment to bring the floor area back up to a high standard need to deliver all of the above criteria while simultaneously ensuring that the new floor’s installation won’t incur crippling downtime, costs and hassle.

Shutting down any area will have knock on effects throughout the production process and therefore it is important to keep downtime to a minimum to ensure a regular, uninterrupted flow of produce.

Flowfresh not only minimises the initial need for a flooring refurbishment (thanks to the durability and extensive lifespan of these systems) but it can be installed without causing significant disruption. For projects that need a floor within the fastest of turnarounds, methyl methacrylate (MMA) systems are available that provide industrial standard surfaces within a curing time of only 60 minutes.

Flowfresh’s versatility and suitability for the food industry was exemplified at McVitie’s production facility in Glasgow, which needed robust, hygienic floors in different textures throughout its busy production room.

Flowfresh RT in bright yellow was applied across the main thoroughfares of the plant’s Line 14, providing a sanitary, slip-resistant surface for this busy, contamination-sensitive area of the site. However, the floor directly underneath the production line needed to be smoother than the rest, to ensure that this hard to reach spot could be easily cleaned. The smoother finished Flowfresh MF system was used here to create a floor with the required profile.

The project was undertaken in four weeks during two phases, with another area (Line 19) seeing the coating applied in a live working environment, so the factory could keep on running without having to wait for the new floor to be finished.

To discover more about food-safe resin flooring solutions that can be made to overcome any challenge, head to Flowcrete UK’s special food & beverage industry webpage or send an email to thefoodteam@flowcrete.com.