The food and beverage flooring and manufacturing industry is prone to liquid spillages on a daily basis. Inside beverage manufacturing facilities, the floors are frequently coated in liquids, which can lead to slippage and safety incidents. In that case, slip resistance flooring ensures the safety of beverage processing.
To ensure the safety of the staff and prevent damage to products and equipment, anti-slip flooring should be installed in all beverage manufacturing facilities. Here are several key reasons why slip-resistant flooring is so important in the beverage industry.
Safety
The most important reason for ensuring that floors are slip-resistant is to ensure the safety of the personnel who work there. Slipping and falling can lead to potentially serious injuries, ranging from sprains and torn ligaments to skeletal fractures and even life-threatening head trauma.
Non-slip floors should thus be installed to reduce the risk of falling when liquids such as water, juice, soda, or even cleaning agents get spilled on the floor. Slip-resistant flooring can provide the much-needed traction to prevent slippage, reducing the risk of accidents and ensuring a more productive work environment.
Hazardous Substances
The beverage industry handles various liquids to create the final product. These liquids can range from innocuous fluids like water to ingredients such as oil, syrup, cleaning agents, and even chemicals that can be hazardous when undiluted.
When these liquids are spilled, they can create a dangerous environment, causing the flooring to corrode or become excessively slippery. Slip-resistant flooring is specially formulated to counter these effects, thereby providing more secure footing for employees and facility vehicles such as forklifts or trolleys.
Moreover, when employees slip and fall, not only can they risk injury from the impact, but they could also risk injury from contact with caustic chemicals that have been spilled on the floor.
High Traffic
The beverage industry frequently involves fast-paced operations in facilities that have a high degree of traffic. There are lots of employees moving around, carrying heavy loads. Sometimes these items are carried by hand or on forklifts and trolleys. This means that the risk of an accident is high if the floors are slippery.
Having slip-resistant flooring improves the stability of all vehicles and assistive devices for transporting beverages around the facility, including those on foot. This increases the grip and reduces the likelihood of an accident, especially in areas where spills are likely to occur.
Protecting Product
The more spillages that occur, the more losses the manufacturer incurs. While it’s expected that a certain percentage of product will be lost through spillages, the more that this can be avoided, the better.
Therefore, reducing spills from slippage-related accidents can save on manufacturing costs and cut down on waste. By installing slip-resistant flooring, the incidence of spoilage and splashes can be reduced, thereby improving margins and simultaneously improving safety.
Productivity and Efficiency
When floors are slippery, productivity and efficiency in beverage manufacturing facilities are compromised, as personnel need to work more slowly and exercise greater caution to avoid falling.
When floors are slip-resistant, employees can move around confidently without having to worry about slipping. As a result, operations can move more quickly and efficiently, leading to greater productivity and a general improvement in employee morale as they feel safer in their work environment.
Slip-resistant flooring can also facilitate faster and easier cleanup of spills when they do occur. The texture of non-slip flooring helps prevent liquids from spreading across larger areas, making cleanups faster and more efficient.
Compliance
Beverage manufacturing facilities in South Africa are subject to stringent health and safety requirements. Slip-resistant flooring is one of these requirements.
By installing slip-resistant flooring, beverage companies can avoid penalties and the legal costs associated with non-compliance. These requirements are put in place to ensure worker safety, product quality, and maintain minimum workplace health and safety standards. This provides peace of mind for consumers, knowing that their chosen beverage was manufactured responsibly.
Reputation Management
Reputation is also crucial in the consumer-oriented beverage industry. It’s important to maintain a positive reputation and assure customers of the responsible manufacturing standards that have been followed.
When beverage industries are frequently associated with safety incidents, it can have a detrimental effect on the company’s reputation, leading to an impact on sales. Ensuring staff protection and a safe manufacturing process is a minimum requirement to preserve a company’s reputation among customers and the public.
By prioritising safety through slip-resistant flooring, companies can enhance trust and better ensure customer satisfaction by demonstrating their commitment to safety for all to see.
Our Recommendation
For a non-slip flooring solution that is ideal for the beverage industry, we recommend Polyscreed© UT, which is a 5 mm thick, non-slip high-performance slurry-bonded polyurethane floor screed. It’s ideal for providing extremely high slip resistance in the beverage manufacturing environment, where a lot of liquid is expected to be spilled on the floor. Its high slip resistance, coupled with its physical and chemical resistance, makes it the perfect flooring solution for this application.
The Polyscreed© UT’s non-slip protective finish is HACCP compliant and offers antimicrobial silver ion technology. This technology ensures that up to 99.9% of all microbes will be killed in contact with the floor surface, making it a hygienic choice as well. Additionally, this screed material has a low volatile organic compound content, making it safe for personnel and environmentally friendly as well.
To learn more about our wide range of slip resistance flooring and flooring solutions and to speak to an expert about which options are best for your business, contact us at Technical Finishes today!
