Milton Creamery

The Milton Creamery is a small, family run, specialty cheese production facility. Itwas built in 2005, opening in 2006, with construction taking place through the late falland winter months. As with many food processing facilities the daily cleaning regimeuses a phosphoric acid hot water wash followed by a sodium hydroxide based hotwater wash and then a rinse. The original plan was to apply an expensive food-gradefloor coating as protection for the floor in the production area. Due to the cold weather,it was determined that drying time for the concrete needed to allow installation of thefloor coating, would be to be too long to meet the construction schedule.The owners decided to use Xypex admixture in the floor, as an alternative to aprotective coating. The 5.5” thick treated slab in the production area is approximately40’ x 60’; using a concrete mix design with 594 lb of Portland cement and no fly ash.Because the daily cleaning regime of food processing plants typically degradesunprotected concrete quite rapidly, it was decided to use an uncommonly highdosage of Xypex admixture to try to give the concrete as much chemical protectionas possible. Steve Chmelar had previous success with Xypex C-500 admixturedosed at 5%; and this was used.

After 7 years of production, the otherwise unprotected concrete floor slab is showingonly minor etching of the surface. The owners of the Milton Creamery have receivedcomments from food agency inspectors that they are surprised at durability of theMilton Creamery concrete slab. It is noted that, when compared to similar facilities,it is the inspector’s opinion that this slab is showing surprisingly little degradation,given the aggressive chemicals used during the cleaning regime.

The owners of the Milton Creamery are fully satisfied with the durability andchemical resistance they are achieving with the 5% Xypex admixture concrete oftheir production floor slab.