Most manufacturing companies are looking for ways to improve the pedestrian segregation in their warehouses, factories, or yards. The ultimate objective is to make their facilities safer.
After an amount of research, you may well have identified that a pedestrian segregation barrier made from polymer is going to be the best overall investment. Maybe you have even had costs in from various suppliers, and now you're trying to determine which supplier to go with.
Here at Clarity, we help companies all over the UK with their pedestrian segregation challenges—often when we're on the verge of winning an order, the competition will play dirty tricks and fabricate some stories around sustainability and polymer performance. As with all our articles, we aim to enlighten our customers to be able to make an educated decision before they make their investment.
At Clarity, We're proud to be the UK distributor and installer of MPM PVC barriers, MPM are a closed-loop manufacturer based in Italy.
Of course a UK-manufactured product should have the advantage over an Italian manufacturer for sustainability, But does it? with MPM reliant on their own solar energy and reusing all the water used in their process, They also have a 'Zero-waste' policy in place. MPM is a true 'Closed Loop' manufacturer; for more information on the most sustainable polymer barriers, see this article here: Which polymer barriers have the lowest carbon footprint?
Having spent more than 10 years working with different polymer types, we know that some polymers are more prone to cracking and shattering than others, PVC as a raw material may shatter in certain conditions.
Similarly, polypropylene can also shatter when subjected to certain impacts in certain conditions, If it didn't, manufacturers wouldn't need to offer freezer-grade and ambient options.
When used for pedestrian segregation barriers, PVC is modified with special additives called elastomers. Elastomers such as MBS can take PVC from being a very strong but potentially brittle plastic to a very strong but highly flexible polymer. See video below:
As with all additives, there are usually some downsides to adding elastomers to polymers, in the case of MBS, it takes PVC from being optically transparent to a cloudy product. For polymer safety barriers, this doesn't cause any problems because the product also includes a colorant to make it a safety yellow colour.
The other challenge with adding an elastomer is that it will increase the cost slightly.
Want to know more about how MPM barriers compare to other products? download the pedestrian safety guide: