Rydges Hotels and Resorts is a hotel accommodation and hospitality provider that operates in Australia, New Zealand and England.
Rydges accommodates one million guests annually across a range of market segments. It provides mid to upscale accommodation, catering from corporate travellers to sophisticated upmarket resorts.
Roxset Health and Safety Flooring, a specialist in food and beverage coating solutions for over 30 years, has been providing tailored HACCP Grade VOC non-toxic flooring to a number of key Rydges properties in Australia since 2008. Currently, five properties have been upgraded with the Roxset SE ultra-hygienic coating in food and beverage preparation and associated areas.
Due to the age of some of the properties, the main kitchens were suffering from maintenance challenges, specifically as the traditional kitchen floors were installed with either large ceramic tiles or vinyl coatings. These coverings present on-going problems with grout cleaning and water penetration through progressive cracking, which led to serious hygiene and slip hazards and would not meet the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) food safe requirements.
Australia is governed by a Food Standards Code. A new code came into effect on 1 March 2016. HACCP is a systematic approach to identifying, evaluating and controlling food safety hazards. A hazard is anything that could make food dangerous to eat and can be, microbiological (e.g. bacteria, virus, fungi) chemical (e.g cleaning products), physical (e.g broken glass, fingernail, hair).
Food safety legislation has specific requirements for food preparation areas relating to the condition and design and includes:
• Floors – should be constructed of a material that is easy to clean and safe to walk on and maintained in sound condition.
• Walls – should be made of durable materials that are washable, non-toxic, easy to clean and maintain.
Over time, Roxset has been upgrading the Rydges Hotel group kitchens by either replacing the vinyl or laying a high-grade seamless epoxy HACCP food grade system over non-drummy tiles. The benefit of epoxy is that when the resin and hardener are mixed together they form a rigid plastic material. This material is strong, durable, resistant and bonds to most base layers. The epoxy is so strong it is used in heavy traffic areas such as industrial environments.
The Roxset SE 3 trowel-on coating is a tailored food grade system which addresses coving, wall intersections and levelling, and falls to drains to ensure rapid cleaning regimes are optimised, especially in busy hotel kitchens.
Roxset SE is a tailored, hand-built protection coating built up with selected aggregates to allow a cure thickness of 4-6mm and has a R12 slip rating.
Roxset recently completed a 380sqm area at the Rydges Hotel in Parramatta, which included the main kitchen, cool rooms, passageway and bar area. These areas are now protected from slippage and any impact or chemical spills and will perform well in excess of 10 years, while meeting all requirements of HACCP’s strict hygiene criteria.