This food preparation facility recently went through a huge upgrade with two old production warehouses renovated and converted into a new factory with a 15,000m² floor area. With the facility housing cold storage rooms, deep freeze zones, warehouses and workshops, a range of high speed doors were needed to ensure smooth operation, hygiene and temperature control between different areas. Having used EFAFLEX doors on two other plants, the owners chose to work with EFAFLEX again, installing 70 high speed doors tailored to the needs of different areas of the factory.

One of the biggest challenges of the project was to ensure tight sealing of deep freeze rooms in order to maintain a constant temperature of -25 degrees. EFA-SST-TK-100 deep freeze doors fit the brief. These heavy-duty high speed doors feature a dynamic door leaf and AFM spiral track (Active Framework Mechanism) that ensures the door leaf remains pushed against a seal around the door frame when closed, providing tight sealing of cold storage areas. Designed specifically for deep-freeze applications, the doors use insulated EFA-THERM laths to achieve excellent thermal insulation, and are fitted with heating in the bottom section, the seal around the frame and in the door leaf to keep all elements free of ice.

By specifying the EFA-SST-TK-100 deep freeze doors, the facility owners have peace of mind that deep freeze rooms will remain airtight and well insulated, while providing time and cost-savings in the long term. The low-energy doors contribute to the factory’s energy-efficiency by ensuring excellent sealing and thermal control, while individually fastened laths ensure smooth running and excellent durability. And should any laths need changing, this can be done quickly and easily at any time, making maintenance easy and non-disruptive.

In other departments of the facility, fit-for-purpose high speed doors were chosen to meet specific requirements. Thermal insulation, opening and closing speed and the number of operating cycles were factored into specification, with several doors having to operate up to 800 times a day.

For some applications, fully transparent doors were used to allow eye contact and a clear line of vision between different production units. While for hygiene areas, stainless steel doors ensure easy cleaning. In departments where food is openly processed, the high speed doors specified ensure safe and hygienic separation from the logistics areas and warehouses. And in addition to customisation for size and performance, the doors were further tailored with different colours for door curtains to suit the application and the employees' access permits.

Ultimately, the careful selection of EFAFLEX high speed doors ensures exceptional hygiene and temperature control tailored to the needs of the facility’s many different departments, with each door offering the low maintenance, durability and speed the facility needs to ensure smooth operations.