Two coating processes, one company, for equipment that gets washed down every day
Food and beverage plants run wet, hot, and on a schedule. Great Dane coats the frames, racks, carts, and guards around your process with powder coating, electrocoating, or both. Our finishes resist corrosion and repeated washdowns. Tell us your sanitation chemistry and we will match the coating to it.
What food and beverage equipment does Great Dane coat?
Great Dane coats the equipment that surrounds food and beverage production. Common jobs include carts, racks, shelving, and dollies. We also coat conveyor support frames, guards, platforms, and stairs. Add mixer and tank stands, machine bases, and control enclosures. Outside the production room, we coat dock equipment, bins, hoppers, and pallet racking. We coat steel, galvanized steel, aluminum, stainless steel, and alloy steels. Two kinds of customers use this page. The first is a plant refinishing equipment it already owns. The second is an OEM that builds food and beverage equipment and needs a coating partner. We serve both. One point matters up front. We coat the equipment around the process, not surfaces that touch food directly. Section 3 explains where that line sits and why. Because we run powder coating and electrocoating in two dedicated plants, we can take either kind of work. Send us a part list with dimensions and we will tell you what fits.
How do powder coating and e-coating protect food and beverage equipment?
A food plant is a hard place for a finish. Equipment meets water, steam, caustic cleaners, acid rinses, sugar, salt, fats, and temperature swings. Bare steel rusts quickly in that setting. Powder coating applies a charged dry powder that heat cures into a hard film. That film resists chipping, scratching, abrasion, corrosion, and many cleaning chemicals. It also holds color, which matters for zone marking and safety marking. Electrocoating works differently. Our e-coat system runs an eight-stage zinc phosphate pretreatment, then the electrocoat application. Racked parts enter a charged bath of Axalta AquaEC 6000 series coating. An automatic voltage control system delivers uniform film thickness regardless of the square footage being coated. The film reaches inside tubing, seams, weld joints, and folded edges. Welded rack frames and cart bases are full of those, and that is where rust starts. Chipping matters here for more than appearance. A chip exposes bare metal, and bare metal rusts and can shed particles.
What can a coating do for cleanability and sanitation?
Here is the honest version. A powder coated or electrocoated surface is smooth, hard, and continuous. It cleans easily and gives soil fewer places to sit. A finish that resists chipping holds that advantage through years of service, which is where the value really shows up in a sanitation program. What a coating does not do is make equipment sanitary on its own. Cleaning does that. We do not claim that our coatings kill or inhibit bacteria. Claims of that kind are regulated, and an auditor will ask for the registration behind them. We would rather tell you only what we can support. We also do not coat food-contact surfaces as a matter of routine. A coating in direct contact with food has to be cleared for that use under the applicable FDA regulation, and most food-contact surfaces stay bare stainless. If you have a part with a food-contact requirement, raise it at quoting. We will look into it and give you a straight answer.
How do these finishes hold up to washdown chemicals?
Washdown is the test that decides how long a finish lasts. Hot water, high pressure, caustic foam, acid rinses, and quaternary sanitizers all work on a coating over time. Different powder chemistries respond to them differently. Some hold up well against high-pH cleaners. Others do better against acids, or against continuous heat and steam. No single powder leads in every category. So we ask what your sanitation program actually uses. Tell us the cleaner and sanitizer names, the concentrations, the water temperature, and how often the cycle runs. Tell us whether the equipment is sprayed directly or only splashed. With that, we can recommend a powder and a film build suited to the exposure. Guessing at this step is how coatings fail early. Pretreatment matters just as much as the powder itself. Parts that are properly cleaned and prepared hold their finish far longer in a wet plant. That work happens before any color goes on, and it is part of every job we run.
When is a dual-layer finish the right choice for food and beverage equipment?
Some equipment needs more protection than either process gives alone. For those parts, Great Dane applies a dual-layer finish. We start with an e-coat primer that covers the whole part evenly. Then we add a powder topcoat for hardness, color, and a cleanable surface. The e-coat guards the metal from the inside out. The powder guards the surface from the outside in. Together they outlast either coating by itself. In a food or beverage plant, that pairing suits welded rack frames, carts, cage assemblies, and dollies. It suits anything with tubing, seams, or hollow sections that stay wet. Water gets into those places and a spray gun does not. It also suits equipment near a wash bay or inside a cooler, where condensation never really stops. Most coating shops offer one process, so a dual-layer job means two vendors and two shipments. Great Dane runs both, so the part never leaves our control. Learn more on our E-Coating and Dual-Layer Coating pages.
What color, finish, and masking options are available?
Color does real work in a food plant. Many plants color code by zone, by allergen, by department, or by sanitation crew. Some code equipment by product line so nothing gets moved into the wrong room. We work from stock colors when speed matters, and from special order colors when the match has to be exact. Send us a color number, a sample panel, or a piece of existing equipment. We also offer a range of gloss levels and textured finishes. Higher gloss sheds soil more easily and shows dirt sooner, which some sanitation managers prefer. Masking protects the surfaces that have to stay bare. That includes bearing seats, threaded holes, sealing faces, gasket surfaces, and equipment nameplates. Our masking program uses conductive silicone plugs that mask the hole and support the part on the rack. For ferrous parts, we use custom silicone masks with high-temperature magnets molded in. Those masks are reusable, rated to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, and leave no tape residue.
How does Great Dane work around plant shutdowns and production schedules?
Food and beverage plants do not stop for a coating job. Most refinishing work has to happen inside a sanitation shutdown, a holiday window, or a seasonal slow period. Those windows are short and they do not move. Great Dane runs a 5-day standard turnaround on most work. When a job needs to move faster, we can often accommodate it. Ask us early and we will tell you honestly what is possible. Capacity is part of the answer. Our 18,000 square foot powder coating plant and 6,000 square foot e-coating plant handle production volume. We take repeat OEM runs and one-time plant projects through the same process. Consistency is the other part. Our rework rate stays below 1%. Parts that meet spec the first time do not come back onto your schedule. We also handle the work around the coating. That includes sandblasting, pretreatment, masking, labeling, and packaging. Light assembly is available as well. One point of contact stays with your job from quote through delivery.
Why choose Great Dane for food and beverage coating?
Great Dane has coated industrial parts for manufacturers since 1991. Owner and General Manager Gary Lamolinara has led the company from the very beginning. We offer powder coating and electrocoating from one company, in two dedicated plants. Most competitors offer one process or the other. Offering both means we recommend the process that fits your part, not the process we happen to run. Quality here is built in upfront rather than caught at final inspection. Plant Manager Colton Adams drove our rework rate from about 3% down below 1%. Quality Manager Kendrick Bolish oversees the systems that hold it there. That record matters to a plant that has to document its suppliers. Both of our processes are also cleaner than liquid paint. Powder coating uses no solvents and emits negligible volatile organic compounds. Electrocoating uses a water-based bath and recovers excess material in the rinse stages. We serve manufacturers throughout the eastern United States and across the eastern seaboard from Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Ready to coat your food and beverage equipment?
Send us your part list, volumes, color requirements, and shutdown dates. Include the cleaners and sanitizers your plant runs. We will recommend powder coating, e-coating, or a dual-layer finish, then quote it. Call 724-537-9709 or request a quote today. We deliver on time and on budget, with no hidden fees.
You can learn more about the markets we provide coating services for on our Industries Served page.