Resin flooring contractors Hinckley distribution and cross-dock operators call on when the floor is failing at the edges rather than in the middle. Serving warehousing, distribution and industrial facilities across Hinckley and Burbage, from Dodwells Bridge and Harrowbrook to the logistics units along the M69 and A5 corridors.
Working for national manufacturers, logistics operators and public sector estates since 1999.
Hinckley occupies the south-western corner of Leicestershire where the M69 meets the A5 along the line of Watling Street, on the direct axis between the East and West Midlands. Its estates have grown outward from that junction into a substantial warehousing belt, while a hosiery and light manufacturing heritage left smaller, older units around the established estates.
What is distinctive here is that goods move across the floor rather than sitting on it. Cross-dock and consolidation working produces linear wear along transfer routes instead of even wear across a bay, and it concentrates everything damaging at the edges: dock levellers, apron thresholds, canopy zones and the transitions where trailers, shunters and forklifts meet the internal slab.
So we survey the dock positions, the threshold levels and the transfer routes before anything else. On a good many Hinckley buildings the middle of the floor is doing comparatively little work, and specifying it as though it were a storage floor is money spent in the wrong place.
Almost every failed industrial floor comes back to the same four variables: the condition of the substrate, the quality of the preparation, the temperature and contamination on site, and whether the system was matched to the traffic it actually carries.
Get those right and a resin floor runs for fifteen years and more. Get them wrong and it blisters, delaminates or dusts within a year or two, regardless of what the manufacturer’s datasheet claims.
We survey the substrate before we quote it. That means moisture testing, an assessment of what is already down, and a written specification naming the system, its FeRFA type and its thickness — so you know what you are buying and so does anyone who has to approve it.
Diamond grinding or shot blasting back to sound concrete, moisture testing to confirm the substrate is dry enough to coat, and repair of cracks, joints and spalled areas before any resin is mixed. Skipping this is why cheap floors blister and peel.
Substrate condition, preparation quality, temperature and contamination are the four variables that determine whether a resin floor lasts fifteen years or fifteen months. FeRFA guidance is explicit: resin flooring follows the substrate profile beneath it.
A long-established estate at the A5 Dodwells roundabout mixing warehousing and light industry.
Substantial industrial and storage capacity north-west of the town.
Mixed manufacturing, trade and storage units close to the town.
Smaller industrial and workshop units on the northern approach.
Established industrial premises south of the town centre.
Modern large-format logistics capacity where the motorway meets the A5.
Linear wear along transfer routes and severe loading at every dock position.
Impact, hard-wheel abrasion and water ingress at the yard interface.
Abrasion resistance, joint protection and demarcation across large open areas.
Hosiery-heritage slabs with dusting, patch repairs and inconsistent levels.
Fuel, oil and hydraulic exposure with pit surrounds and wash bays.
Temperature transitions and washdown at goods-in, which favour polyurethane over epoxy.
The dock edge is the one place on a warehouse floor where resin alone is not the answer. A leveller lip takes trailer feet, dropped loads and steel wheels along a single line, and a resin floor laid up to an unprotected edge will crater and delaminate there again however heavy the build-up. The edge has to be protected mechanically, and the floor detailed up to that protection. Any contractor who quotes you a coating for a failing dock edge and says nothing about the edge itself is selling you the same failure twice.
Levellers, edge protection lines, trailer feet and dropped loads chip and crater in the same places every time. Those positions are surveyed and priced individually rather than swallowed into an area rate.
Where the external falls run towards the threshold, water stands at the entrance and becomes a slip risk in summer and a freeze risk in winter. Correcting that is groundwork and screed, taken before the finish.
In a cross-dock building the heavy build-up belongs along the transfer routes and at the dock positions. Specifying the whole floor to the worst condition in the building is money spent where very little is happening.
On a new unit in the M69 and A5 corridor the floor specification is usually written to the developer’s budget rather than to your operation, and it is rarely revisited until something fails. EN 13813 for screed materials, EN 1504-2 for surface protection and the FeRFA Type classification give you a defensible basis for comparing what is offered, instead of accepting a base-build specification because it arrived with the building. We are happy to review a tender before you sign it.
In an occupied building the work is phased dock by dock and route by route, with the aprons and thresholds taken at night or at the quietest point in the week and each area handed back only when it is genuinely trafficable. Where the window is very short we will discuss rapid-cure systems in terms of what each one needs rather than quoting a timescale we have not tested on your slab.
Preparation runs under H-class extraction with areas screened and waste contained. Respirable crystalline silica is limited under EH40 to 0.1 mg per cubic metre over eight hours, and goods-in doors standing open make containment a design decision rather than an afterthought.
BS 7976 pendulum testing is the reference at dock thresholds, canopies and goods-in doors, where wet contamination is a daily certainty on A5 and M69 corridor sites.
BS 8204-6 covers in-situ resin flooring practice, but correcting falls at a threshold is a design decision taken before the resin is chosen. It is not a property of the resin.
EN 13813, EN 1504-2 and the FeRFA Types let you compare tenders on the same basis, and EN 13501-1 with the fl suffix is a fair question for anything entering a new or refurbished commercial building.
The Workplace Regulations 1992 and HSE guidance L24 apply with real force where pedestrian routes cross moving loads repeatedly through a shift.
FeRFA classifies resin flooring into eight types by build-up and thickness, and BS 8204-6 governs which one a floor actually needs, with EN 13813 for the screed and EN 1504-2 for protection of the concrete beneath. Polyaspartic and MMA sit outside that classification because they describe the resin chemistry rather than the build-up. In Hinckley the heavier Types 7 and 8 belong at the dock positions and along the transfer routes, Types 3 and 4 with integral demarcation carry the open floor, and polyurethane rather than epoxy answers goods-in areas where chilled and ambient meet.
FeRFA Type 1. Two or more coats up to 150 microns, binding a dusting substrate and giving a cleanable surface. From £8 per square metre.
FeRFA Type 2. Dual component to 300 microns, solvent free, in gloss, matt or silk. Chemical resistance with a decorative finish.
FeRFA Type 3. Up to 1000 microns over prepared concrete and the system specified on most industrial jobs. Takes colour well for demarcation.
FeRFA Type 4. Multi-coat build at 1 to 3mm with aggregate broadcast between coats, for impact and constant wear.
FeRFA Type 5. Flow-applied at 2 to 3mm for a seamless finish where hygiene and cleaning matter more than impact resistance.
FeRFA Type 7. Three part filled system at 4 to 6mm thickness, giving a self-smoothing finish for heavy and very heavy duty areas.
FeRFA Types 7 and 8. Trowel-applied at 6 to 9mm to take thermal shock, steam cleaning and constant heavy forklift traffic.
Cures at temperatures down to −5°C and is ready in around two hours. Installed overnight or at a weekend it can remove the need to shutdown entirely.
Cures in hours, but the odour can taint food, fabrics and stock and the area must be cleared and ventilated. Better suited to new build and refurbishment projects.
Rates run from £8 per square metre for a floor seal to £45 for MMA, inclusive of preparation, labour and materials. On a dock-led job the edge detailing, the threshold falls and the transfer-route build-ups are measured separately from the open area. Specifying an entire warehouse floor to dock standard is the most common way a quotation here gets inflated, and we will say so rather than take the larger order.
| System | FeRFA | Thickness | Per m² |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floor Seal | Type 1 | Up to 150µm | From £8 |
| Epoxy and PU Coating | Type 2 | 150 – 300µm | £8 – £12 |
| High Build Coating | Type 3 | 300 – 1000µm | £8 – £12 |
| Multi-Layer Flooring | Type 4 | 1 – 3mm | £12 – £16 |
| Self-Smoothing | Type 5 | 2 – 4mm | £20 – £30 |
| Heavy Duty Flowable | Type 7 | 4 – 6mm | £25 – £35 |
| Heavy Duty PU Screed | Type 8 | 6 – 9mm | £30 – £40 |
| Polyaspartic | Chemistry | 300 – 500µm | £38 |
| MMA | Chemistry | 2 – 6mm | £45 |
Inclusive of preparation, labour and materials. Rates assume a sound, accessible substrate and are indicative until the floor has been surveyed. Polyaspartic and MMA sit outside the FeRFA type classification because they describe the resin chemistry rather than the build-up.
A three day shutdown at a plant turning over £2,000 an hour is £120,000 of lost output. On most sites that is several times the price of the floor.
Five contractors quoted one timber processing plant. All five proposed the same system and a three to four day closure. None of them costed the closure.
We proposed a faster-curing system installed across a weekend. A higher rate per square metre, and no shutdown at all. On the client’s own figures the avoided losses exceeded the price of the floor.
We install evenings, weekends and one bay at a time.
Whether a shutdown costs you thousands an hour or simply gets in the way, you do not always have to close your site for a resin flooring installation.
Patch repair, crack filling and making good on multi-layered and previously patched floors.
Walkways, crossings and exclusion zones designed to the space that actually exists.
Damp proof membrane where a substrate fails moisture testing, as a standalone package.
Abrasion resistant floors and joint repairs phased around continuous shed operations.
Hygienic coved systems with falls to drain, installed overnight between services.
Confined workshop floors prepared under extraction with neighbours still trading.
We work across the area regularly, from Dodwells Bridge and Harrowbrook through Hinckley Fields and Middlefield Lane to Sketchley Lane at Burbage and the logistics units at M69 Junction 1. We are Cheshire based rather than Hinckley based, so a survey usually happens within days and there is no mobilisation charge for attending.
Almost always because the repair replaced the floor but not the protection. A leveller lip takes concentrated impact along one line, and a resin repair taken up to an unprotected edge has nothing behind it. The sequence that lasts is mechanical edge protection first, then the floor detailed up to it. If that is the answer on your docks we will tell you, even though it is not all our work.
We can, but not with a coating. Standing water at a threshold almost always means the falls run the wrong way, usually because they were set for the yard rather than for the building. That is corrected in screed or groundwork before any finish goes down, and it is priced as its own item because it is the part that solves the problem.
Ask what FeRFA Type the base-build floor actually is, what the dock positions and transfer routes are specified to, and whether EN 13501-1 fire performance has been stated. Then ask for the same information from any alternative so you are comparing like with like. Specifying at fit-out costs a fraction of reinstating a failed dock area two years in.
No, and in a cross-dock building that linear pattern is exactly what we expect. Wear follows the transfer routes, so the heavy build-up belongs there and at the dock positions, with a lighter system across the rest. We set the zones out at survey and price them separately.
From £8 per square metre for a floor seal up to £45 for MMA, inclusive of preparation, labour and materials. Dock edges, thresholds and transfer routes are priced separately from the open floor. The full table by system is on the cost page.
Tell us how many dock positions you have, what moves across the floor and whether water reaches the threshold. We attend, survey the edges and the transfer routes, and put a written specification and a fixed price in front of you at no cost.
