At Flowcrete we often see how the rigours of food manufacturing can take its toll on a floor. Factories regularly get in touch because the original platform that was installed just wasn’t up to the task of coping with the wide variety of demands that get thrown at it.
The hot oils, greases and chemicals used in processing invariably end up on the floor and corrode the surface. Thermal shock from hot water wash downs crack and disintegrate weak surfaces and frequent impacts from heavy machinery, foot and vehicle traffic dent, damage and destroy unprepared floors.
This is what Prairieland Foods Inc./Quality Snack Foods Inc. experienced. The Illinois based pork snack maker noticed that the epoxy floors installed in some areas of their facility had started to fail, as you can see in the image below. The floor just wasn’t able to cope with the heat variations and intensive cleaning regime on site.
After only a year they had started to notice deterioration, which they put down to a failure of the wrong product in the wrong place. But more than this, Prairieland Foods realised that this problem had created a potential hygiene risk, as the cracks were prime sites for bacteria build up.
They called in Concare Inc. to install a new floor that would withstand their manufacturing process and help safeguard their hygiene record. Concare Inc recommended that Flowcrete’s Flowfresh HF should replace the 12,000 sq ft of failing floor.
Flowfresh was put forward as it has a proven track record of being able to withstand abusive food environments. It combines high levels of resilience to heat, chemicals and wear with an easy to clean finish and a special Polygiene® additive which eliminates 99% of surface bacteria.
The images in the gallery at the top show the factory floor after Flowfresh was installed, and you can see the difference it made. The smooth surface is much easier to clean and allows Prairieland Foods to carry out their day-to-day operations without worrying about stubborn contaminants spoiling products or inadvertently destroying the ground beneath their feet.
If you’d like to find out more about Flowfresh click here for information, data sheets and case studies. If you’ve got a quick question you’d like to ask the Flowcrete team then post it in the comments below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
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Nice blog. Thanks for share.