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3 Mistakes You’re Making With Food Factory Flooring

When specifying your food factory flooring, you may be making some very costly mistakes with your resin system.

You may think that going with industry-standard might be the best route, but the standard doesn’t always mean it’s the best.

And a low-cost polyurethane (PU) or epoxy resin floor doesn’t necessarily mean value for money. In fact, it may end up costing more in the long run.

In this blog, we will be highlighting 3 mistakes you may be making with your food factory flooring, including:

Short term savings with your food factory floor
Shutdown time of your food manufacturing facility
Warranty with your resin floor

And how using alternative flooring could help you to rectify these mistakes.

Read on to find out more…

Short Term savings with your Food Production Facility Floor

When specifying flooring for your food manufacturing facility, you may look towards cheaper options such as PU and epoxy resins. After all, these are preferred in industry, purely down to the initial cost of the floor.

But does that mean that it is the most cost-effective?

More often than not, the answer is no. It is wrongly accepted that floors will need to undergo multiple repairs throughout their lifetime and need a full replacement in 5 to 10 years.

There are several technical explanations as to why these repairs are needed with PU floors, but the costs of the repairs and replacements should be factored into your investment.

Shutdown Time of Your Food Manufacturing Facility

When it comes to resin flooring, your facility will need to be shut down to allow for the installation to take place.

You will then need to wait for the floor to cure for it to be ready for use. However, this is often confused with the floor being dry.

How long does this usually take?

Typically for resin and PU floors, the dry time is 5-7 hours, with the cure time being around 7 days, leaving you to lose at least a full week of food and beverage production.

With PU floors, if the floor is laid in sections, you start off with only having a mechanical bond between these, so you start from a less than ideal position.

With Acrylicon floors, it is possible to lay the resin floor in sections as the joints achieve a chemical bond and fuse into a monolithic structure.

Due to our unique formula, our resin softens and bonds to itself during the installation process, resulting in no mechanical joints.

This can allow you to continue working whilst we install the floor in your food factory environment, as we may be able to do small sections at a time while working overnight or at weekends, as we have done so on many other projects.

Acrylicon Cure Time is Less

Acrylicon has a much shorter cure time than that of PU and Epoxy systems. Therefore, a full floor replacement wouldn’t impact food production schedules to a great extent, since it normally takes around 2 hours for the floor to be fully usable after the final coat is applied.

However, one drawback with typical MMA resins that also have this cure time is their low compressive strength – not ideal when wanting to maintain a hygienic floor.

Therefore, it’s essential that when choosing flooring based on a short cure time, you choose a system that has high compressive strength. Acrylicon has a compressive, abrasion, impact and flexural strength that is generally far superior to other Resin Systems, including those from the MMA chemical family.

No Warranty with Your Resin Floor

The main issue with using a PU or resin floor could be the warranty you receive with the floor, as more often than not, there isn’t one.

This can be due to nobody wanting to foot the cost of the problem throughout the supply chain and as far as each level is concerned, their responsibility is finished as soon as the floor is passed on to the next.

As you are only dealing with the installer in this process, you may find disagreements within the chain as to whose responsibility the issue is, with nobody wanting to take ownership.

You may wonder, who is my warranty actually with?

The responsibility may be passed around the supply chain, as each may come up with reasons as to why it is not with them, especially if your floor is specified to a price, and not to quality.

The solution to this problem is simple. Choose a company that explicitly states the warranty you will receive and understand what may void it.

At Acrylicon, we are able to provide this as all of our resin floors are manufactured, distributed and installed within the Acrylicon Group. Also, Acrylicon Installers are only able to install systems to the specifications of the designers and manufacturers of our resins.

Conclusion

When it comes to specifying your food manufacturing plant resin floor, it is important your specification meets your budget, as well as your quality expectations.

Although one floor may seem like a good price upfront, there may be a reason and as the saying goes, it may be too good to be true.

If you want top-quality, long-lasting resin flooring that outperforms others in the market in terms of cure time, longevity and hygiene, then Acrylicon is the option for you.

To arrange a free no-obligation floor survey from one of our local experts, get in touch today.

About Acrylicon

Acrylicon, the go-to industrial flooring company, has been implemented by Unilever, Walkers, McCain, Network Rail and many more companies that understand the cost implications of shutting down.

Their fast cure combined with the immense compressive strength saves you time, money and hassle when it comes to your industrial flooring. They can work at weekends or in business downtime to ensure minimal disruption to your daily processes.

With a life expectancy of up to 4-8 times longer than traditional resins, Acrylicon’s unique chemical composition ensures you get better value for money than from any other resin floor available.

Acrylicon’s long-lasting resin flooring is used across a variety of sectors including in food factories, commercial kitchens, warehouses, hospitals, supermarkets and car parks.

All new flooring comes with a 10-year performance warranty for complete peace of mind. Every installation is carried out by trained and certified regional installers so there are no split warranties.