Linamar Corp. Production Facility Flooring

Background

As a continually growing components and systems manufacturer for industrial and mobility industries with a desire to support sustainability efforts, Linamar Corp. wanted their production facility in North Carolina to last a long time. Part of that meant giving the concrete flooring of the facility the ability to withstand highly abrasive manufacturing procedures.

To do this, construction teams in the region typically turn to products like dry shake hardeners. But these products come with significant application challenges for contractors. For one, they pose additional monetary and health costs. Not only do dry shake hardeners require machinery to be broadcast properly, but they also come with silica dust, which can cause serious health hazards and OSHA fines if a construction team does not take the right safety measures. To make matters worse, dry shake hardeners are not easy to apply. They are sensitive to windy weather and require two application rounds. In effect, dry shake hardeners are costly, hazardous, and time-consuming to work with. All of which held little appeal to Linamar Corp.’s construction team. With that in mind, the team sought a more affordable, safer, and less time-consuming solution to increase the resiliency of the new facility’s concrete flooring.

Solution

Guaranteed Supply Co. helped the team find the answer: Hard-Cem. As a concrete admixture for abrasion and erosion resistance, Hard-Cem has a one-step application process that’s free of any silica dust and doesn’t require extra machinery. That would not only expedite the construction team’s work but also lower the risk and cost of application. On top of that, Hard-Cem has been proven to more than double the typical life span of concrete, ensuring there would be very few maintenance concerns for Linamar Corp. In short, Hard-Cem presented an opportunity to move away from the limitations of dry shake hardeners, which the team took on, adding Hard-Cem to the new facility’s concrete flooring. The team’s concrete contractor, Fessler & Bowman, found the application made their work much faster, easier, and safer than if they had used dry shake hardeners. Meanwhile, Linamar Corp. was pleased with the end result of the application. They now had a highly abrasion- and erosion-resistant facility floor that required less time, effort, and cost to produce and would have fewer maintenance and repair requirements, lowering the cement used throughout the facility’s service life and in turn drastically lowering the facility’s lifetime carbon footprint.