KEMTILE’S GOT HYGIENIC FLOORING COVERED FOR MAELOR FOODS

Poultry processors Maelor Foods commissioned Kemtile – the leading suppliers and installers of food grade hygienic flooring and drainage – to supply and fit out its new ultra-modern slaughtering facility in Wrexham.

At an investment of £20million – and creating 150 jobs –  this new facility has permission to process up to 400,000 birds per week. Sourcing its birds from local farms that comply with British Red Tractor guidelines – enabling it to provide premium “A” grade quality chickens – there are plans to boost weekly capacity to one million if this limit is granted by the local council.

It is the second project that Kemtile has undertaken in partnership with Maelor and saw the installation of 4000m² BASF Ucrete UD200SR heavy duty polyurethane screed over a nine-month period. Offering exceptional resistance to aggressive chemicals, heavy impact and temperatures of up to 150^oC it is also ideally suited for rapid refurbishment in the food industry – installed and cured within a 12-hour application window.

Selected for its hygienic and chemical resistant properties – as well as its strength, wear and slip resistance – Kemtile applied Ucrete MasterTop 1317 to the substrate with a trowel to a resistance of R12. Dense and impervious, this lightly textured floor finish provides excellent resistance to temperatures and a wide range of industrial chemicals. It’s fully steam cleanable and serviceable at temperatures up to 120^oC, which is essential in a poultry processing environment.

Kemtile laid the majority of flooring to falls – a typical approach in wet process areas to allow water and liquid spillages to flow to drain.

An area of the flooring situated in the chiller rooms above the basement is also coated with BASF’s MasterSeal M869 – a highly elastic, two-component, hand applied polyurethane membrane that provides excellent crack bridging and waterproofing capabilities whilst being thermoset.

Both of the plant’s gas pits were also coated with Ucrete MasterTop 1790, which offers the necessary resistance to chemicals and gases used during this process.

Kemtile Director Jamie Cook said: “We completed phase one of this project with Maelor back in 2016, when we installed 2800m² of the same Ucrete flooring system at its adjacent cutting plant. This site, which was formerly the Maelor Creamery, was bought back in 2015 and consent has since been granted to turn it into a poultry processing facility. We were delighted to be invited back and to continue our partnership.

“As part of the wider, privately owned Salisbury Poultry group – with similar facilities across three sites in the Midlands – Managing Director Raj Mehta had a very clear idea of flooring requirements he wanted for his newest site. The Kemtile team worked closely with him at every stage of project – from design through to specification and installation – to ensure that we were on brief and that the flooring’s capabilities were maximized. This included some tweaks along the way, but the end result was bang on brief and meet the owner’s exact requirements.”

Raj Mehta, Managing Director of Maelor Foods, said: “As a group we have ambitious growth plans and demand is high for fresh chicken. This puts us in an enviable position. Chicken is the only protein in the UK meat, fish and poultry (MFP) sector to experience growth in retail sales and we have all the facilities to capitalize – now and in the future.

“To ensure that we maximise this opportunity, it’s essential that the basics are in place. This includes plant flooring as mistakes in this area are costly. We’ve worked with Kemtile before so trusted them to provide us with the best flooring solution to meet our needs.  The quality of products they use was also central to our decision to work with them again.”

This project for Maelor Poultry is  the latest meat processing project to strengthen Kemtile’s already impressive industry credentials – joining the likes of Cargill, Moy Park, Faccenda and 2 Sisters Food Group.

For further information visit https://www.kemtile.co.uk/meatprocessing/

Credits

• Kemtile Ltd