Naivas

Flowcrete Africa has supplied the full flooring fit out for a new supermarket in Nairobi’s Ciata City shopping mall.

The 3,250 m² Naivas store has been designed to offer an upmarket retail experience, with an in-store bakery, meat counter, dairy, hot food and pizza oven.

The designers required a floor that would tie into the new-build store’s visual identity while providing a robust and easy to clean surface. These properties would ensure that the finish maintains its aesthetics despite heavy foot and trolley traffic, spillages of food and drink, frequent cleaning and the inevitable scuffs, scrapes and abrasions inherent to a large food retail space.

To achieve this, the floor build-up started with 3,000 m² of Isocrete K-Screed, creating a strong screed layer for the floor finishes to be applied on top of. This semi-dry cementitious screed incorporates a proprietary additive to produce an early drying, high strength screed.  

Two different coatings were then installed, a decorative epoxy for the customer facing areas and a hygienic polyurethane for the back of house spaces. 

2,500 m² of Peran STB was used throughout the shop front in a light grey colour that matched the store’s interior design scheme, in which complementary tones of grey have been used to infuse the shop with a relaxed yet contemporary style.

The decorative and durable epoxy resin floor coating Peran STB is made using colour stable quartz granules sealed within a clear resin binder. This formulation is ideal for busy retail areas, as its colour and visuals won’t deteriorate when faced with the practicalities of daily operations in a supermarket. 

In Naivas’ bakery, 500 m² of the antimicrobial enhanced, polyurethane system Flowfresh RT was installed. This HACCP International certified finish was chosen thanks to its ability to provide an ultra-hygienic floor that will be able to withstand the challenges of a bakery, which includes thermal shock from hot ovens, corrosive ingredients such as sugar and oils, point loading from heavy equipment, intensive cleaning chemicals and more.

The entire flooring project was completed in only three weeks, delivering a high performance, fully optimised floor area well in advance of the supermarket’s opening.