Industrial painting and coatings protect the food industry in numerous ways. Restaurants, commercial kitchens, and high-volume food and beverage processing facilities present a unique set of challenges. With extreme temperature variations, spills, chemical cleaning, and heavy traffic, these facilities need surfaces that are durable and easy to maintain.
The proper industrial coatings help ensure the success of your business, safeguard the integrity of your products, and protect your employees.
Maintaining your food processing facility is crucial for ensuring food and beverage standards and maintaining a safe, clean environment for employees. With high production outputs and constant activity, your facility and machinery can become worn and negatively impact your product and operational standards. With the application of specialty coatings and paints, maintaining your facility and maximizing production are greatly improved.
How Industrial Coatings Help
1. Compliance
Industrial coatings protect the food, employees, and patrons of the food industry. Everything surrounding the product must be food grade, including the flooring. Floors need to pass rigorous safety and sanitation standards established by the USDA, FDA, OSHA, and local and state regulatory agencies. The best way to protect flooring and ensure compliance is with a food-grade coating.
2. Strength and Durability
Food and beverage plant floors need coatings that can withstand harsh conditions from regular cleaning to temperature extremes. Flooring needs to be strong enough to hold up against heavy foot traffic, machinery, and chemicals. Epoxy coatings are a durable and cost-effective solution for many industrial and commercial settings.
3. Sanitation
Proper sanitation is key to meeting safety standards and keeping a positive brand reputation. Frequent cleaning is needed, so surfaces must be moisture-resistant and easy to sanitize. Since daily cleaning using solvents, alkaline cleaners, and sanitizers occurs in restaurants and food processing facilities, industrial coatings should be applied to protect surfaces and make sanitation easier.
4. Safety
Slip, trip, and fall hazards are among the most common causes of injury in the food manufacturing industry and U.S. workplaces in general. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), floors and flooring materials contribute directly to more than 2 million injuries each year. Food-grade epoxy and urethane coatings can include slip-resistant features that provide extra grip, even when wet, to prevent slip and fall accidents.
5. Thermal Shock Resistance
Refrigerated rooms in manufacturing plants and agricultural facilities cleaned with hot water and steam need thermal shock-resistant flooring. Standard floor covering materials typically cannot withstand exposure to cycling between hot and cold temperatures without cracking or peeling. Epoxy floor coatings can be applied to concrete subfloors to serve as a protective layer against thermal shock.
Types of Industrial Coatings
There are many industrial coatings suitable for food and beverage facilities. The installation of an FDA and USDA-approved flooring system mitigates the risk of contamination and helps ensure your facility remains in compliance. Selecting suitable paints and coatings for different surfaces is vital in establishing safe, efficient, and compliant food processing plants.
Epoxy Coatings
Restaurants and food processing facilities often rely on epoxy coatings to improve sanitary conditions and employee safety. Epoxy floor coatings offer many benefits for commercial facilities of all types. Epoxy tolerates frequent cleaning and harsh chemicals and can address specific industrial food-grade flooring requirements.
Urethane Coatings
Urethane coatings withstand heavy traffic, are chemical and abrasion-resistant, and non-toxic. Seamless urethane floors are known for easy cleaning and maintenance. They are long-lasting, slip-resistant, and easy to sanitize. Meat and poultry processing plants frequently install urethane floor coatings because of these properties.
Antimicrobial Coatings
Antimicrobial coatings are surface treatments that contain additives to prevent the growth of bacteria, mold, and mildew. A wide variety of industrial coatings have antimicrobial properties which reduce the spread of bacterial and food-borne illnesses. Some contain an active ingredient that kills bacteria, while others resist them passively by preventing microbes from sticking to surfaces.
Trust the Professional Industrial Coatings Experts
Food and beverage industrial coatings must balance rigorous safety compliance with functionality. When it comes to food processing, maintaining a hygienic facility is critical. Depending on the specific industry, the paints and coatings used must meet strict standards. Working with an industrial coating expert is the best way to ensure that your facility meets all regulatory requirements.
Adam Roe Painting provides a wide variety of industrial painting services. Our team has the knowledge and experience to recommend and apply USDA and FDA-approved products that meet your specific regulatory requirements. We specialize in TNEMEC brand coatings systems recommended for the foodservice industry.
Since 1985, Adam Roe Painting has provided the highest quality results and best customer service in the industry. We offer custom color matching, a residential exterior warranty of 5 years, and a one-year warranty on commercial and industrial projects. Contact us online or call (208) 306-4240 to schedule a free consultation.
