Food and beverage production sites run on two tensions: keep stock moving at speed, and keep it safe. Stillages live in the middle of both. They carry ingredients between stores and lines, hold finished products ready for dispatch, shuttle empty containers back through the cleaning loop, and survive washdown, CIP cycles and cold-chain environments without turning into a contamination risk. The right stillage spec keeps your BRCGS audit clean and your line moving. The wrong one becomes an allergen carrier or a corrosion problem two years in.
Range Storage has manufactured stillages for UK food and beverage clients since 1979, from bakeries and dairies to breweries and meat processors. Below, we cover the hygiene expectations UK food-sector buyers need to meet, the material and finish choices that follow from them, and the handling specifications that separate a food-grade stillage from a generic industrial one.
What “food-grade” actually means for a stillage
Food-grade isn’t a regulated single term; it’s a shorthand for a set of requirements drawn from HACCP, BRCGS, SALSA and ISO 22000. For a stillage the practical requirements come down to:
- Non-porous, cleanable surfaces that don’t trap food residue or bacteria.
- Corrosion resistance under repeated washdown with hot water, detergent and often chlorinated or caustic sanitisers.
- Traceability so that the stillage’s path through the site can be logged, particularly where allergens or high-risk product zones are involved.
- Design that prevents cross-contamination through clean geometry, no blind pockets, and drainage where washdown is standard.
A stillage doesn’t have to be made of stainless steel to be food-grade. It has to be built, finished and specified so that it doesn’t introduce a hygiene hazard into the process.
Stainless steel, powder-coated carbon steel or plastic?
Three materials dominate UK food and beverage stillage fleets. The right choice depends on direct food contact, washdown exposure and cost.
Stainless steel stillages
Stainless is the default for direct food contact, CIP-cleaned equipment and high-humidity zones. Our in-house fabrications team builds stainless stillages to bespoke spec.
Powder-coated carbon steel stillages
Heavy-duty fabrication in food-safe RAL-coded colours. Powder coating is hard-wearing, chip-resistant and easy to wash down. This is the standard choice for ingredient transport, packaging stock, finished goods in sealed packs, and any application that doesn’t involve direct food contact. Colour coding is what makes allergen segregation practical across a busy site. See our powder coating capability for finish options.
Plastic pallets and containers
Widely used for short-trip, single-product applications. Plastic tolerates washdown but doesn’t stack or carry the weights that steel stillages do, and it wears out faster in high-cycle operations.
Washdown, CIP and steam cleaning
Food-sector stillages see cleaning regimes that generic warehouse stillages won’t encounter:
- Hot pressure washdown with detergent and sanitiser, daily in most plants.
- CIP (clean-in-place) for stillages used to move ingredients through pipework-adjacent zones.
- Steam cleaning in meat and high-risk plants.
- Chemical sanitation that eats through unprotected steel within months.
The stillage design has to accommodate this:
- Stainless steel with no crevices handles all these.
- Powder-coated carbon steel with a good pre-treatment handles hot washdown and most detergents, but struggles with aggressive chemical sanitation over time.
- Mesh bases and sides drain better and dry faster than solid panels, which is why mesh is common in dairies and meat plants for drainage reasons; solid-sided stillages are preferred where allergen containment or dust prevention matters more.
Colour-coded stillages for allergen segregation
Most UK food sites now run some form of zone segregation for allergen management: a dedicated gluten-free line, a nut-free room, a ready-to-eat high-care zone. Colour-coded stillages are one of the cheapest and most effective controls you can put into that system.
The principle is simple: each zone, allergen or product family gets a colour. A blue stillage never enters the red zone; a yellow ingredient stillage never touches a green one. Operators, managers and auditors can see the control at a glance.
Range Storage powder coats stillages in any RAL colour at Dewsbury. Common food-sector specifications are blue (seafood), white (dairy), yellow (allergens present), red (raw meat), green (ready-to-eat) and orange (non-food).
BRCGS, HACCP and audit trail
UK food buyers are mostly working to BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 or equivalent (SALSA, ISO 22000). The stillage doesn’t usually have a dedicated audit clause, but it shows up under several:
- Hygienic design: stillages are equipment coming into contact with product or product-contact surfaces. They need to be specified and maintained to avoid contamination.
- Allergen management: segregation controls, including physical identification of equipment and containers by allergen zone.
- Cleaning and hygiene equipment, including stillages, must be cleanable to a verifiable standard.
- Traceability:: every load carrier in the supply chain needs to be identifiable back to its origin and usage history where required.
For UK-specific context on stillage compliance, our stillage safety regulations guide covers the regulatory baseline.
Sector-specific use cases
Different food sectors need different stillage formats. A few of the patterns we see most often include:
Bakery and confectionery
Ingredient stillages for flour, sugar and bulk dry goods, often with drop-bottom or hinged-base designs for controlled tipping into mixers. Proving racks, cooling frames, and powder-coated mobile stillages for mid-line handling. Allergen segregation (gluten-free, nut-free zones) drives colour coding.
Dairy
Stainless steel for washdown and chloride resistance. Stillages for keg-style handling of bulk milk and cream containers, tote frames for IBCs, and cold-chain-tolerant frames for chilled products.
Brewery and soft drinks
Keg stillages in heavy-duty steel, bottle crate stillages for returned empties, and bulk box pallets for packaging stock. Colour coding by product line or by keg ownership. Our box pallets range is widely used in UK brewery operations.
Meat and fish processing
Stainless steel for chloride and acid resistance. Hook-fitted stillages for carcass handling, tray stillages for primals, and washdown-tolerant frames that survive high-care CIP. Drainage (mesh or perforated bases) is important.
Ready meals and co-packing
High turnover, high cycle, often mixed allergen zones. Colour-coded powder-coated steel stillages dominate, with stainless reserved for direct-food-contact stages.
Specifying food and beverage stillages with Range Storage
Food-sector stillages almost always end up bespoke. A generic warehouse stillage might cover the basic function, but the colour, the material grade, the cleanability specification and the dimension match to a specific ingredient tote, crate or carcass rail usually need engineering in. We build to spec on our in-house CAD and fabrication lines, powder coat in our own facility and offer stainless steel fabrication for direct-contact applications.
All our stillages are manufactured to ISO 9001 quality management, backed by British manufacturing and supported by a repair and refurbishment service that extends fleet life without compromising food-sector hygiene standards.
If you’re spec’ing a fleet for a bakery, dairy, brewery, meat plant, ready-meal facility or beverage bottler, speak to the Range Storage team today about bespoke builds, stainless fabrication, and food-safe colour coding to match your allergen and hygiene zones.
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