For companies in the food preparation and cold storage business, food safety is a crucial concern, one that puts extreme demands on the hard surfaces where prep and storage take place.

Wherever food comes in contact with floors and walls, there’s the potential for bacterial growth leading to dangerous contamination, especially in refrigerated sections. The food industry follows strict cleaning guidelines that use bleach and high-pH chemicals to combat the problem. But these substances attack hard surfaces, causing them to fail early.

VCNA Prairie Material teamed up with FCL Builders and concrete experts at M-JTJ Contractors to address this issue for the owners of Professional Freezing Services (PFS), who are constructing a new, 300,000-square-foot facility in Bedford Park, Illinois. The company provides leased processing stations, flash-freezing operations along with cooler and frozen storage space for a variety of food producers.

Phase 1 of the new plant features a 32,000-square-foot refrigerated repack room, where customers can lease processing stations to prepare meat, poultry, fish and vegetables for flash freezing, packaging and storage, says PFS President Edward Grzywacz.

In an operation of this kind, animal blood, fat and other byproducts routinely fall to the floor, Grzywacz explains. Stringent USDA standards require that floors be scrubbed daily with hot water, bleach and high-pH compounds, which can rapidly destroy untreated concrete. Grzywacz had seen the problem in other plants and was determined to keep it from happening again.

Thinking beyond standard hardeners and coatings

he design-build team at FCL had originally specified a shake-on hardener topped with an epoxy coating for the repack floor in Bedford Park. But when Euclid Chemical, makers of the hardening product, reported that it could not provide the needed resistance to cleaning chemicals, the search for an alternative was on.

Grzywacz remembered the epoxy coating used to protect the floor at another PFS plant. It had failed in less than 4 years.

“It looked beautiful, but it was fragile,” he says, noting that even a hairline crack on an epoxy ​floor could lead to problems. “I knew there had to be a better way, something more durable at the same cost or less.”

With the initial price tag for epoxy coating estimated at $1.5 million, there was plenty of room to find a cost-saving alternative.

What works in agriculture might work here

With construction deadlines looming, M-JTJ Superintendent Jonathon Gorogianis came to VCNA Prairie about a week before the pour date to discuss alternatives.

Steve Fleming , Prairie’s Technical Services Director in Chicago, knew about a proprietary mix design that developed by affiliate company VCNA Canadian Building Materials (CBM), another North American subsidiary of Votorantim Cimentos . Branded as Re-Pel in Canada, the mix yields high-density surfaces with low chemical permeability.

Fleming got in touch with Phil Zacarias, Technical Services Manager at CBM’s Toronto facility, who confirmed the mix was ideal for PFS’ needs.

“The low permeability resists the chemical reaction of fertilizers, salt, solvents, detergents, fatty acids and animal urine while reducing the potential for cracking and scaling,” Zacarias says. Resulting surfaces are stain resistant, easier to clean and resist bacterial absorption. Builders in Canada have used it for more than a decade, mostly for structures in livestock operations.

Zacarias forwarded full product information to decision-makers at PFS and M-JTJ as well as FCL Senior Project Manager Steve Rutkowski , who worked directly with experts in Toronto to find out more about the product’s performance in the field.

Adjusting the Canada mix

After initial discussions, FCL gave a tentative thumbs-up. Prairie staff members then teamed up with Zacarias to tweak the mix for placeability and finishability.

“We needed to change the composition for local materials, and we added more slag for chemical resistance and placement characteristics,” Steve Fleming says.

“Since this mix hadn’t been used in our area before, FCL was a little hesitant to give their final OK,” says Gorogianis. “We received the go-ahead at 5 PM the afternoon before the first pour.”

The right ingredients for high density

Extreme density is provided primarily by low water-cement ratio and the addition of silica fume to the mix, Fleming explains, noting that silica fume particles are 100 times smaller than standard cement particles, allowing them to fill virtually all voids.

“Silica fume also has tremendous pozzolanic qualities, which react with the calcium hydroxide produced during cement hydration, creating much higher strengths,” says Fleming. The substance has also been used to create high-strength mixes of 12,000+ psi for high-rise towers constructed in Chicago and Toronto.

Low permeability with longer service life

The floor in PFS’ new repack room will be 300% to 400% less permeable than standard, untreated concrete. Its greater durability will deliver up to 75% longer service life than conventional concrete.

“For what this owner is looking to do, it’s a great solution – easy to place, cost-effective, readily available and no secondary process needed to get results. It’s all in the mix with no extra sealers required,” Gorogianis says.

“No matter what, the food business is hard on floors,” says Ed Grzywacz. “Knowing I can expect 8 to 10 years of trouble-free performance makes me happy.”