Generally regarded as the most abused area of any plant, appropriate flooring is an essential component of any meat and poultry company’s facilities.

“The food and beverage industry environments are the most demanding to maintain, including the need to withstand thermal shock, regular and frequent cleaning schedules, wet conditions, and narrow repair and installation times,” notes Gina Atzinger, focus market manager - food and beverage for The Sherwin-Williams Company, a Cleveland, OH-based coatings giant maintaining the largest paint and coatings distribution network in the United States. “We must also consider worker safety with respect to slip hazards in these facilities.”

Sherwin-Williams’ Cincinnati, OH-based General Polymers brand, acquired in April of 2000, meets processors’ tough requirements with its line of wall and flooring products, while the rapid return-to-service products in its Express-Tech‰ line significantly minimize plant downtime.

The company’s FasTop‘ Flooring Systems and Armorseal“ ExpressPatch products, for example, allow flooring areas to return to service in four-to-six hours time, while the Envirolastic line of Polyurea systems for walls and floors have cure times from three to five minutes with extremely high elongation properties. “These products are all part of our ExpressTech line which is dedicated to minimizing downtime for the end user and labor for the installer,” Atzinger stresses.

Among other products, General Polymers offers EPO-FLEX®, a 100-percent solids elastomeric epoxy used throughout the flooring industry as a crack bridging membrane that helps prevent reflective cracking from concrete due to contraction/expansion cycles or unanticipated random slab cracks, and POLY-COTE™ 4685W, a 100-percent solids urethane coating, which resists virtually all standard cleaning compounds used in the food processing industry and maintains a white-white appearance over time.

“POLY-COTE may also be applied as a topcoat to high-build epoxy wall systems such as SANIGLAZE™, SANIGLASS™, and SANIFLEX™,” explains Atzinger. “SANIFLEX is a new high-build flexible wall system that provides tenacious bond to masonry or concrete block, while withstanding the tremendous physical abuse dished out by random impact, high-pressure cleaning, and other forces throughout food and beverage plants.”

Sherwin-Williams largely credits its longstanding success [the company was incorporated in 1866] with successful relationship-building and its dedication to product research and development. “Whether in a meat-processing facility, packaging, distribution, or at a dry-docked ship, we are here to answer your coating questions, identify solutions, and provide you with the benefits of working with the number one coatings supplier in the United States,” Atzinger concludes, adding that, “Change is the only constant in today’s market. To address advances in chemical processing, new trends in facility maintenance, and increasing environmental regulations, Sherwin-Williams continuously expands the envelope of coatings technology.”