Vebro materials have recently been chosen to add the finishing touch to a number of spray booths for Freuhauf Trailers in Grantham, UK.
Fruehauf is a UK-based manufacturer of rigid and tipping trailers, priding itself on manufacturing products that are built to last, with quality at the heart of everything they do. Acknowledged for their precision engineering, the company has a significant portion of the market share for tipper and planked trailers and are applying their legendary quality, design and construction excellence to the rigid market.
The company’s 64 acre site in Grantham, Lincolnshire, has seen a number of developments as part of a three year £30m investment programme announced in 2022, which will see the introduction of new trailers and bodies to the product portfolio.
The spray booths at Freuhauf Trailers are specially built enclosures designed to accommodate spray paint spraying operations, protecting colleagues from the noise, but also isolating and removing overspray and vapor produced during the spray application process, which can cause fires and, in some cases, explosions.
Advanced Flooring Systems’s Specialist Preparation and Industrial Flooring divisions were called upon to achieve a high-performance floor finish in the spray booths using vebrores EP HBC.
Advanced Flooring Systems, founded in 2007 in Armagh, Northern Ireland, provides specialist flooring installation services across the UK and Ireland, for clients in industrial and commercial industries.
The slabs required significant preparation prior to the installation of resin floor coating systems. The company’s spray booths have been in use for a number of years, and a build-up of up to 80.0 mm was present.
The substrate was scabbled and ground thoroughly, removing the contaminants and build-up in order to prepare it for receiving resin finishes.
Scabblers use compressed air to hammer piston-mounted bits into the concrete surface, removing up to 20.0 mm of build up from the slab, typically resulting in a rough surface. A combination of scabbling and grinding created a level, keyed slab that would allow for a suitable bond with the floor coating system.
Even after this thorough preparation, the very nature of the spray booths, where years of paint had built up on the floor, called for specialist primer that would mitigate any possible transmission of latent contamination from the slab.
vebro EP OT Primer, Vebro Polymers’ oil tolerant epoxy primer, was chosen to prime the substrate prior to the installation of two coats of vebrores EP HBC EP Universal. This epoxy high build system is known as vebrores EP HBC, and while it is typically applied with a standard epoxy primer or DPM in industrial settings where the substrate does not display signs of contamination, vebrores EP HBC EP OT Primer can be substituted where there is residual oil in concrete and cementitious floors.
Designed to improve the adhesion of subsequent epoxy and polyurethane coatings and cementitious screed systems to substrates that have previously been contaminated with oils and have been thoroughly prepared but may still retain some traces of residual contamination, the 0.15 – 0.3 mm applied specialist primer can be overcoated in 12 – 24 hours.
vebrores EP HBC is a pigmented, solvent-free, easily-applied high build epoxy floor coating designed to protect concrete substrates and is best suited to coat floors in medium duty areas where a hard-wearing, chemical resistant floor finish is required.
vebrores EP HBC was installed at the Grantham production facility in Agate Grey RAL 7038, one of Vebro’s Polymers 18 stocked colours — a series of epoxy-coating shades that we keep in stock at all times, giving applicators the peace of mind that their chosen colour will be available under a quick turnaround.
The 18 stocked colours include 9 Glorious Greys and 9 Brilliant Brights, and cover our most popular pigments across the vebrores range of high-build and self-levelling epoxy coatings.
You can see the full range of readily-available, in-stock pigments in the Stocked Epoxy Coatings Colour Guide.
The abrasion-resistant properties of vebrores EP HBC ensure that the flooring effectively withstands the demanding demands of daily operations, enduring the effects of wear and tear over extended periods. This robustness minimises the need for frequent repairs or replacements, contributing to long-term cost savings and minimal disruption to operations.
The seamless application of vebrores EP HBC makes the floor easy to cleanse and maintain, while its impressive resistance to chemicals, oils and other prevalent agents encountered in spray booths, ensuring the spray booths can maintain their integrity despite their intensive usage.
Vebro Polymers is a supplier of polymer flooring, specialist coatings, rapid-set cementitious underlayments and car park deck wearing solutions with manufacturing and office headquarters in the UK and Asia. Our industrial coating systems are specifically designed to meet the needs of heavy-duty environments where durability, chemical resistance and safety are critical.
