With over 75 years of experience outfitting food production facilities, Stancold Food Projects has honed a deep understanding of the critical decisions that go into creating the most efficient production sites. One essential, yet sometimes overlooked, element is the choice of flooring covering. In food production, food safety and production efficiency go beyond equipment and layout—it starts from the ground up, making flooring a fundamental consideration for any facility.
Food producers have several floor-covering options for their facilities, each with its own advantages and limitations. To provide clarity, we’ve compiled a quick guide to the most common types we encounter on-site—tiles, vinyl, concrete, treadplate, and resin—outlining key considerations to help you assess which best suits your specific facility and operational needs.
When we refer to floor coverings, we mean the layer applied above the subfloor. In most facilities we work with, the subfloor is typically concrete, but in mezzanine areas, it may be timber.
Many food facilities incorporate sloped flooring to direct water towards a drain, making the cleaning process more efficient. This is typically achieved by applying a screed topper to the subfloor before installing the floor covering. Additionally, coving can be used to create a smooth, seamless transition between the floor and wall panels. Hygiene is critical in food production, and seams can create hidden areas where dirt and other contaminants may accumulate, making cleaning more difficult.
To help you make an informed choice, let’s examine the strengths and potential challenges of the most frequently used floor-covering options in food facilities.
Laid to Rest: The Legacy of Tiled Floors
First, in many older food production sites our Food Projects Specialists see tiles as the floor covering. ‘Once upon a time, tiles were a great option for food and drink producers,’ says Stancold Business Development Manager Andy Connell, ‘but their functionality has been surpassed by more modern materials.’
While durable, tiles are more labour-intensive to install than some alternatives, and the grout lines between them can trap dirt, mould, and bacteria.
For food and drink producers, tile repairs can be frustrating since removing a single damaged tile often risks breaking adjacent ones. Tiles also lack the durability needed for facilities that use forklifts or heavy pallet trucks, making them impractical for high-traffic areas.
A Seamless Situation: Resin in Production Spaces
Next, we have resin flooring, which has become an increasingly popular choice in food facilities.
While resin flooring offers several benefits, there are some important factors to consider. It’s typically on the more expensive side of the floor covering options, laying it can be difficult, and its physical composition means it’s unsuitable for most mezzanine areas.
Even with these considerations, resin flooring remains a popular option for food and drink producers who value its long-term benefits.
Unlike vinyl and tile, resin is put down as a liquid in multiple layers, so all the layers of the floor covering are the same. If the resin happens to get damaged, the underlayer is also resin. This creates less headaches than other materials for cleaning as there are no underlayers where materials could be hiding.
Resin can also be laid on top of a screed topper to angle the floor towards a drain, as mentioned before. Many food safety guidelines recommend a floor covering that slopes toward a drain to ensure proper water runoff and hygiene. Using resin flooring with a screed underlayer and coving allows food producers to achieve this, creating a seamless, food-safe surface that directs liquids efficiently and supports easier cleaning.
‘One of the main benefits of using resin flooring in your food facility,’ says Stancold Project Service Manager Sam Glover, ‘is it interfaces very well with whitewall panels and drainage systems.’
With the right specifications, resin flooring can be durable enough to accommodate forklifts and heavy pallet trucks. Better yet, if and when a food facility’s resin floor becomes damaged, it is straightforward to repair since the resin’s original format is liquid. The cracks and damages can be filled in and smoothed out.
Unlike vinyl and tile floor systems,” says Andy Connell, “resin is physically seamless, making it more suitable for food and drink production environments.”
A vinyl floor in a seafood facility our team worked in.
It’s the Vinyl Countdown!: Efficient Installations
A vinyl floor covering can also be a practical option for food and drink producers.
Vinyl food facility floor coverings tend to run into similar issues as tiles. The top layer of vinyl is thin, so if it becomes damaged then a different ‘backer’ material is exposed. Due to the composition of vinyl flooring, repairs are more difficult. To make this issue worse, vinyl can be easily damaged. Repairs will be difficult as vinyl is one large sheet, so producers might have to replace the entire sheet.
When a vinyl floor covering is laid to fall, it not only creates a weak point in the floor covering but also a seam where two pieces need to be joined together with industrial glue.
Despite these drawbacks to vinyl flooring, there are some positives to using it in different areas of your food or drink facility. First, vinyl tends to be a less expensive option than resin. Also, due to its flexible composition, it is not negatively affected by movement and can be used in areas of the factory that are not supported by a concrete base, such as a timber mezzanine.
Another benefit of vinyl for food facility flooring is it is generally easier and quicker to lay than other flooring options.
Solid Ground: Concrete in Food Facilities
Concrete can serve as a floor covering, even though it often doubles as the subfloor. While concrete is naturally rough, it can be polished to achieve a smooth finish. The primary advantages of using concrete flooring in a food facility are its affordability, durability, and ability to support heavy equipment like forklifts and pallet trucks with ease.
A polished concrete floor covering within a freezer project Stancold completed in Bodmin.
On the negative side, when concrete does get damaged, the cracks tend to spread quickly. Plus, due to its surface, concrete can be more difficult for food and drink producers to clean.
Step by Step: Treadplate in Tight Spaces
Treadplate is the last of the floor covering materials our Project Specialists encounter the most. This material tends to be used in smaller freezers and chillers where it does not make sense to lay a concrete topper. Treadplate is a slimline product that does not require a curing time, making it efficient to lay in small spaces.
Treadplate is suitable mostly for areas with only foot traffic as it is not practical to drive a forklift or pallet truck on it.
Conclusion:
Every facility is unique, and with over 80 years of combined expertise, the Stancold team can tailor a flooring solution to fit your specific site as part of your facility fit-out project.
It’s levels of expertise like this that our team’s extensive industry experience affords us. If you’re looking to fit out a new food production site or reconfigure or expand an existing one, feel free to get in touch with the Stancold Food Projects team:
0117 316 7000
info@stancold.co.uk
