Kraft Singles and Velveeta Cheese Processor Taps EP Floors for Food Processing Plant Floor Coating

Kansas Dairy Ingredients, producer of well-loved products such as Kraft Singles and Velveeta Cheese, has a new top-of-the-line processing plant. To ensure that it meets the highest of safety and sanitary standards, it sought out the expert services of USDA approved food processing flooring specialist EP Floors Corp to install a custom flooring system that can withstand the daily demands of food processing.

Hugoton, KS (January 28, 2014) – When dairy processor Kansas Dairy Ingredients (KDI) expanded its operations and built a new processing plant, it made sure that the facility met the highest of safety, sanitary and work efficiency standards.

To ensure this, KDI teamed up with expert installers and service providers for its top-of-the-line showcase facility. For their food plant flooring installation, KDI, with the help of industrial and commercial contractor, JE Dunn, tapped leading domestic flooring provider EP Floors.

EP Floors, a specialist in food and beverage processing flooring, installed PUMA-CRETE HF—a proprietary blend of polyurethane resins and cementitious aggregate blend. It is a trowel-applied mortar, installed in one pass at 6 to 9mm thickness.

This kind of material is designed to withstand harsh conditions in dairies and food processing facilities including live steam, thermal shock and thermal cycling between -50°F and +250°F, CIP chemicals and other sanitizer cleaners, and grueling impact and abrasion conditions.

EP Floors operations manager Sean Mitchell noted that the KDI project required thorough preparation and analysis to ensure that the urethane concrete floors met  the unique requirements of the dairy processor. “KDI needed a stronger design because floor drains are normally the weakest points in a flooring installation,” Mitchell said. “We addressed this by keying in each drain. We cut out 1.5 inches wide by three-quarter inches deep around each drain to provide extra strength, integrity, and a seamless ‘locked-in’ fit.”

Combined with the over-all strength of EP Floors’ troweled resurfacer, which is five times stronger than concrete, KDI’s food plant flooring is definitely one of the toughest floors in the local food processing industry today.

In fact, this extra attention to detail and extra effort impressed local health inspectors that they have asked permission to bring other regulators and food processors to the new KDI facility to see examples of best practices in food processing facility design and construction.

 

 

Foundation for Success 

KDI’s floors are among its most hardworking assets. Every day, their floors are subjected to heavy forklift and foot traffic, and loads weigh as much as 3,000 pounds each.

Its new Southwest Kansas-based floor-to-ceiling showcase facility, a $20 million investment, receives 12 tankers of milk and processes 2.5 million pounds of milk per day. Eventually, these raw materials are made into well-loved products such as Kraft Singles and Velveeta Cheese.

According to Darian Reams, JE Dunn project manager, the goal of the new KDI plant is to optimize the way materials and people move throughout the facility, and to share the building with visitors without disrupting employees at work. “We’d say that flooring is one of the biggest concerns in a food processing plant,” he added. “It’s important to have a floor that’s durable, non-skid, sanitary and easy to maintain. Concrete, alone, is not enough for a dairy plant because the strong sanitizers and other chemicals erode concrete.”

The PUMA-CRETE HF which EP Floors used for KDI is the ideal flooring for a heavy duty and high-technology plant like KDI’s. It helps create a safer and healthier work environment by reducing slips and falls, and provides a surface that actively works to fight germs and bacteria. KDI’s cement urethane mortar flooring features a seamless cove base which transitions to 30” high concrete curbs, and extends up and over the curbs, to to wall panels, and includes a special design for the floor drains.

Right Flooring Choices

In selecting the right easy to clean, high performance flooring solution for a food processing plant, Mitchell suggests looking at all variables—budget, potential downtime, temperature, traffic loads and degree of slip resistance required—before making a final decision.

For instance, packaging areas with moderate traffic require a thin film coating system with good stain resistance. Regular wash down and process areas, on the other hand, require additional protection including thermal shock resistance, impact resistance, and chemical resistance.

“Of course, there is no substitute for an experienced team of flooring specialists who truly understand the demands of the business,” Mitchell added. “In the case of KDI, they are now experiencing the material gains of investing in quality food processing flooring, well planned architecture and design, and topnotch building materials and vendors. They may soon add dry milk and cheese production to the facility, and they are confident that with a dependable partner like EP Floors, they can continue to grow and diversify while adhering to superior quality standards.”

In addition to KDI, EP Floors’ roster of satisfied clients include industry leaders like Kroger, Campbell’s Soup, Del Monte, Kraft Foods, Cargill, Swift and Company, Pepsi, and American Seafoods, among other top names in food and beverage manufacturing.

For more information about EP Floors’ USDA approved food processing plant floor coatings, read about our dairy food processing services.

 

About EP Floors Corp.

EP Floors Corp. is a vertically integrated flooring company, providing  food processing flooring that is heat resistant, polyurethane cement flooring throughout the United States.  Specializing in Food & Beverage Processing Flooring,  EP Floors Corp provides the materials, installation with their own crews, and a solid warranty. 

For more information, contact: Sean Mitchell Phone: 1-800-808-7773   E-mail: smitchell@EPFloors.com