Flooring Systems Built to Last, Designed for Product and Worker Safety

In the day-to-day running of a meat or poultry processing facility, most employees working on the floor don't think twice about the floor itself--and that's just the way plant operators like it.

If a floor is damaged, at worst, or outdated, at best, a company likely will have to contend with a production slowdown, food-safety problem or employee injury, among other potential pitfalls, somewhere down the line. That is particularly true in pivotal, heavy-traffic areas such as a further-processing floor or storage and retrieval room.

Although floors in any type of manufacturing environment get a fair share of use and abuse over the years, surfaces in perishable food plants like meat and poultry facilities are distinctive for a variety of reasons--and hence pose a unique set of challenges.

"You can come up against multiple things. There are environmental conditions that are different, like high relative humidity in an area or a continuously wet floor," reports Steve Lipman, technical manager and urethane product manager for flooring supplier Dur-A-Flex Inc., East Hartford, Conn. In food processing, he adds, wide temperature variations in a relatively short period, such as hot water discharge from boilers or kitchen equipment or from steam cleaning, or extreme cold conditions such as blast freezers and coolers can have an adverse effect on adhesion of synthetic flooring materials.

Flooring products need to exhibit a co-efficient of thermal expansion and contraction similar to that of concrete to avoid the stresses caused by thermal cycling affecting the bond strength to the concrete.

Paul Patuka, president of Advanced Surfaces Corp., Villa Rica, Ga., also says that conditions inside a meat-processing plant can pose issues, even in different parts of one building.

"You have ambient temperatures in eviscerating areas, which are normally 55 to 60 degrees, and in picking rooms, which are usually around 70 degrees. Those are constant temperatures. Then you get into frigid temperatures, like freezers and coolers, and refrigerated areas like deboning areas, and that makes it challenging," he says, adding that the thermal shock of washdowns in colder sections requires a certain type of flooring that can withstand such treatments.

Temperature is just one variable in a typical meat and poultry plant, adds Jeff Baker, sales representative for SlipNOT Metal Safety Flooring, of Detroit, Mich. "It's a mixed bag in these types of settings. The blood and grease, for example, can create a tricky situation from an environmental standpoint. The only thing similar is the oil and petroleum industry," he points out.