Sam Smith

Occasionally, food production and hygiene teams come to Klipspringer asking for resin-set brushware. Normally, this is when one of their auditors or customers have specified it as a way of improving bristle retention or hygiene.

In this blog, we’ll be looking at the concept of resin-set brushware alongside Klipspringer’s standard hygiene brushware, touching on the pros and cons of each, so that you can decide what’s best for you.

We also want to be upfront and say that, at Klipspringer, we supply both resin-set and non-resin-set hygiene brushware, and hold these in stock for same-day despatch to our 4000+ food industry customers. It is important that you assess the risks and food safety needs of your site processes, along with your audit standard stipulations, when deciding which brush type is right for you.

To start with, we’ll take a look at how resin-set brushes are designed.

The brush head, or stock, is manufactured with a lowered central section, with a raised lip around the edge. Once the bristles are inserted into the brush head, resin is simply floated over the bristles in the lower section, and left to set around the bristle clumps, as shown in the image below.

On the positive side, the resin can help to seal the bristle holes from potential penetration by bacteria and other harmful microorganisms. This is the purpose it was originally designed for, and can speed up the cleaning and sanitisation process of your brushes.

Resin can also help to secure the edge bristles of the clumps in place, so that if the bristle anchorage is not fully secure, these bristles are less likely to fall out during use.

However, none of the resin used in any resin-set brushware on the market is directly food-contact approved. This is a problem if the brushes you are using are likely to come into contact with open product.

In addition, the resin can be prone to flake off when in use, presenting a foreign body contamination risk from flaking material that is clear in colour, and hence very difficult to identify in any visual quality check.

Resin-set brushes are also much more expensive than standard hygiene brushware, due to the more intensive manufacturing process involved.

Lastly, contrary to popular belief, the resin-set method makes little or no difference to the strength of the overall bristle retention of the brush, as the resin is only in contact with the outer bristles in each clump of bristles. The majority of the bristles are therefore still relying on the strength of their anchorage within the brush head.

Plus, most foreign body issues relating to bristle contamination are as a result of bristles being snagged or cut by machinery, and not due to bristles simply falling out. Resin-set brushes have no way of reducing this risk.

The cons listed above are the reason why the majority of Klipspringer’s customers across food production facilities choose our standard hygiene brushware range, for both non-food contact and food-contact applications.

As well as being completely food-contact approved, Klipspringer’s standard hygiene brushware is designed specifically to have the strongest possible bristle retention, using high-density brush bodies which are moulded under the highest possible pressure so as to eliminate weak spots or bubbles in the brush heads.

In addition to this, the bristles are inserted into the bodies at high speed and heat, securing the bristles into the brush heads in such a strong way that any bristle loss that does ever occur is almost exclusively always due to bristles being snapped and snagged by machinery, rather than bristles falling out or coming loose; neither resin-set or any other bristle retention methods are able to prevent snapping or snagging.

Secondly, there is a much wider range of brushware products available in the standard hygiene range, compared with resin-set, giving more flexibility to choose the right brush for the particular application.

While there may be a slightly higher chance of bristle clumps becoming clogged, the impact of resin is minimal, and with appropriate sanitisation/cleaning processes in place for hygiene equipment, this is unlikely to be necessary.

So, there’s an overview of the pros and cons of resin-set brushware alongside Klipspringer’s range of standard hygiene brushware.  Ultimately, the choice is yours based on the risks and applications associated with your purchase, however we hope this has given you a balanced view of our feedback based on supporting over 4000+ food and beverage sites across the UK & Ireland, and around 22 years in the industry!

Both ranges are available to view and purchase online at klipspringer.com, and if you require further support with your brushware, don’t hesitate to contact the Klipspringer team!