September 23, 2014
Most of the time, food production teams pick a coating that provides the right level of nonstick at a good price point. On the back end, production costs start to soar because coating failures cause delays and product issues. Simply put, issues with the coatings on production equipment is one headache that you don’t want your team to have to deal with on a regular basis.
We help a lot of food production teams who have reached this conclusion. There are a number of coatings that we recommend for long-term cost savings, including DuPont PTFE coatings. But one of the coating ranges we recommend the most is the Xylan® range of food grade coatings, which is the 8000 series of Xylan coatings from Whitford Worldwide.
Whitford’s food grade Xylans offer a number of different coatings that are specially formulated to perform in specific types of environments. When selected and applied correctly, they offer the kind of worry-free long-term durability that is needed in major industrial food operations.
Xylan 8114 is an example of a higher-durability food grade coating. By adding more bonding resin to the original formula (for Xylan 8110, a classic FDA-compliant dry film lubricant), Xylan 8114 is harder and more abrasion resistant than 8110.
Xylan 8840 is a single-coat finish that is exceptional because it uses FEP rather than PTFE as the nonstick element. FEP (when correctly processed) provides even better nonstick properties than PTFE, and so 8840 is a coating that we highly recommend where stickiness is a real issue, especially for high-sugar foods.
We also occasionally recommend Xylan XLR, which is not part of the 8000 series, but is the current top-of-the-line nonstick for durability in food grade release coatings. Use of this coating depends on your needs.
Questions? Comments? Contact Dave Arney, COO, if you have a specific project you’d like to discuss.