All about Cleaning Services at a Food Manufacturing Facility

What are areas that may need attention?

Blending tanks and storage tanks of every size, of various compositions, and with various ingredients are likely. If they have water treatment or waste water treatment on-site, then various other tanks, basins, and containments may require cleaning. Customers need tanks cleaned for various reasons including: best use of the tank, creating more available capacity (removing solids build-up), preparing for tank inspections, contamination or product issues, and other causes. Using different levels of water pressure for cleaning is based on efficacy of removing a material and the tank’s integrity. A 10K or 20K PSI waterblaster will cut through fiberglass or plastic tanks. Consideration of the tank composition is another component of choosing the right tool to utilize. 

Ovens or areas where dry product exists, possibly even electrical components is yet another area for attention. In these cases cleaning with water is not the approach, instead dry ice blasting or labor-intensive approaches may be better suited to the task at hand. Examples include conveyors, areas in food processing areas (during outages).

Confined Space Entry work exists even at food manufacturing facilities. In these cases, having a trained confined spaces contractor to address issues is important. Also having the ability to provide confined space rescue where required can be a determining factor in choosing your contractor.

Water Treatment and wastewater treatment are also common. Within the water treatment services industry, this can be a bunch of different things. Terms such as aeration basins, thickeners, clarifiers, vaults/wells, trenches, influents, effluents, neutralization tanks, sedimentation, drying beds all have their place. These need to be cleaned over time based on the level of treatment and accumulation of residuals.

What are times that industrial cleanings occur?

Scheduled outages are when many food manufacturing facilities will do their maintenance to develop optimum efficiency. Examples such as ovens and furnaces, process piping, above ground process and holding tanks, tunnels and conveyors (production lines) require routine industrial cleaning to prevent unforeseen “downtime”, prevent safety hazards, reduce cost, and maintain efficiency.

Downtime for your equipment is not profitable. First Environmental strategically manages industrial services into the client’s time frame to decrease downtime. Some companies will pinpoint their slowest months for this type of work, including holidays. It is common to have electrical, plumbing/piping, cleaning and facility vendors all working in the same space at the same time.  

Disposal and Transportation



Although technically this isn’t cleaning, it is the final step in removing materials from a site, so I have included it here. The disposal itself can be landfill, recycling, reuse or other methods depending on the materials involved. Some food products have additional outlets including livestock feed if the material still has value. Removing the material can be accomplished by vacuum (this can apply to all types of materials), by hand, or by gravity. Each method has additional considerations such as where to store the material. For vacuum removal, either vacuum boxes, frac tanks or liquid vacuum trucks are common for larger volumes. Totes or drums may apply to smaller volumes. Either way, conveying the materials to their final destination takes logistics and right containers to make it easier.

FDA or other Audit Preparation

Most companies like to do a deep clean in advance of site audits. If an upcoming audit requires some facility-wide cleaning, we do that, too. Dust management at areas above 8ft (thinking rafters, horizontal surfaces, de-webbing, and areas that are less accessible for regular janitorial staff). Our team has training for operating in lifts, working at heights, fall protection and dealing with various dust types to improve efficiency and minimize expense.