Eleven years ago, Flowcrete and Polygiene® set out together to provide the food and beverage industry as well as a number of contamination sensitive sectors with an ultra-hygienic flooring solution.
Polygiene® began in Malmö, Sweden in 2006, when a group of engineers came together to create a business that would specialise in antibacterial treatments for different types of surfaces and materials. Out of this collaboration they came up with a new additive – Polygiene®. Today Polygiene® is a global market leader within the field of odour-control technology with regard to technology leadership as well as brand recognition.
Many of the products Flowcrete offer today have been developed in close cooperation with Polygiene® right from the start! In particular, the HACCP International certified Flowfresh range, which was developed out of an exclusive global partnership between Flowcrete and Polygiene® in order to create an advanced surface protection able to eliminate up to 99.9% of bacteria and actively inhibit the growth of bacterium including E-coli, Salmonella Typhi, MRSA, Listeria Weshimen and Staphylococcus Aureus.
“The first delivery we made was bound for the production plant in England”, says Bertil Ohlsson, the Technical Director of Polygiene®. “The partnership has been very fruitful and today we are shipping our additive all over the world to plants in Belgium, Poland, USA, Malaysia, South Africa and China.”
In fact, over the past decade the Polygiene® powered Flowfresh range has been installed in a long list of large-scale and high-profile food and beverage plants around the world.
The Polygiene® additive is homogenously distributed throughout the Flowfresh system, which allows it to remain active for the lifetime of the floor even if worn or damaged. This is a great advantage for food and beverage facilities where the floor is subject to heavy mechanical impacts on a daily basis, as a damaged floor provides microorganisms with the opportunity to colonise, especially within hard to clean areas sheltered from the cleaning process.
Typically hygienic floor finishes and coatings will rely on harsh chemicals to kill bacteria, however Polygiene® is an all-natural solution and instead uses the power of silver ions. No other flooring solution utilises the natural germ killing properties of natural silver in this way. Its effectiveness meets both the ISO 22196 and JIS 222801 standards for measuring a surface’s antibacterial effectiveness.
“We are very appreciative of our collaboration with the innovative team at Flowcrete and that we have this great opportunity to grow together in the flooring market, says Christian von Uthmann, CEO at Polygiene®.”