Experts from leading hygienic flooring specialists Kemtile attended the Sustainable Food Factory show today for the first time with a powerful message around the benefits of laying sustainable floors in fast-moving food production environments.
Sustainable Food Factory is the UK’s leading event for decarbonising food and beverage operations, bringing together the UK’s value chain to learn, collaborate, network and share best practices in sustainable food and beverage operations.
Kemtile, a division of Stonhard, has been providing high performance flooring solutions to customers across the UK’s food and beverage industry for over 40 years.
Their ‘single source’ approach to flooring focuses on extending shelf life, reducing material waste, supporting efficient cleaning regimes and future-proofing sustainable food production.
Insights into sustainable flooring for a vertical farming factory will be on offer as the experts look to drive debate around moving the approach to sustainability from a moment to a mindset.
At the show on Stand A3, they will also be launching several product innovations in the space – notably new kerbing technology from international kerbing partner, Polysto.
CleanRock® kerbs are a next generation composite which includes recycled cut off materials from the company’s CleanSheet panels for walls and ceilings, making the kerbs stronger and more sustainable.
The new technology builds on an earlier highly innovative R & D project exploring recycled composite materials including recyclates from wind turbine blades.
Dave Sleight, Key Account Manager at Kemtile, commented: “Sustainability is not only about reducing energy consumption, but also creating facilities that last longer, perform better, generate less waste and support efficient food production for years to come.”
Together with technical partners in Stonhard – which operates in 50+ European markets and has 100 years of its own install and manufacture expertise to share – Kemtile has redefined sustainable flooring for super demanding Clean-in-Place (CIP) environments.
CIP areas present some of the harshest conditions within food and beverage manufacturing regularly reducing the lifespan of conventional flooring systems, leading to repeated repairs, increased material consumption, unplanned downtime and higher lifecycle costs.
To meet these challenges Stonchem CIP from Stonhard is an advanced flooring system that combines the proven thermal shock resistance and durability of Stonclad UT with the exceptional chemical resistance of Stonchem 800 series vinyl ester technology.
Dave again: “It simply supports a more sustainable approach to high pressure facility management.”
Setting the tone for Kemtile’s approach to sustainable practice is Stonhard parent company RPM International Inc. Based in the US, RPM is a $7.4 billion multi-national company founded in 1947 with a significant commitment to a sustainable future.
Its Building a Better World programme integrates sustainability into every level of its business and equips its associates at Kemtile and across the world with an understanding of how sustainability issues – like climate change – may impact us and encourages them to lead and innovate.
Dave again: “The most sustainable flooring solution is one that performs reliably for years. We help our clients reach their own sustainability goals while maintaining the highest standards of hygiene, safety and productivity.”
Innovations in Food (& Beverage) Processing & Packaging is a bi-monthly magazine distributed globally in Digital format. www.innovationsfood.com. X: @Innovfoodtech. Instagram: @innovationsinfoodtechnology. Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/terry-prior52
