PPE / 6 MIN READ

Protective clothing for UK food factories, head to toe

The call comes at 2pm on a Thursday. A customer has found a blue fragment in a pack of your product, and the glove cuff on line three looks a lot like it.

By KP Trading & Distribution · 6 minute read

Protective clothing for UK food factories, head to toe, KP Trading and Distribution. Photo is illustrative. — Head to toe protective clothing · Photo is illustrative

Protective clothing for a UK food factory is a system, from mob cap to boot sole, and it fails at its weakest piece. Get the specification right for each zone, change items at a set frequency, and keep the paperwork for every item. Get it wrong and you pay in foreign body complaints, audit findings and kit you buy twice.

What does the law actually require?

Less than you'd assume. Regulation 852/2004, Annex II, Chapter VIII says food handlers must keep a high degree of personal cleanliness and wear suitable, clean and, where necessary, protective clothing. It doesn't mention hairnets, colours or laundering. Those details come from the standards and your customers.

Under BRCGS Issue 9, clause 7.4 covers protective clothing. As commonly summarised, 7.4.5 expects gloves to be replaced regularly, suitable for food, single use, intact and a distinctive colour, ideally blue. Practitioner guidance says hairnets should cover all hair and ears, snoods should be used for facial hair, overalls shouldn't have external pockets above the waist or sewn-on buttons, and they should come off before toilets and the canteen. Clause 7.4.3 limits home laundering to clothing that isn't used for product safety, and 7.4.6 says clothing that can't be laundered should be cleaned at a frequency based on risk. Check the standard itself for exact wording.

SALSA is plain about hair (its 1.2.5 guidance, Issue 5): all of it, including beards and moustaches, must be fully contained. That applies to visitors and contractors too, with coverings provided at entry points.

Employers also have to provide PPE free of charge. Since 6 April 2022 the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations cover limb (b) workers as well as employees, so agency staff and some contractors count.

What goes on from head to toe?

Start at the top. Mob caps and hairnets should cover all hair and the ears. A snood goes over a beard. Cheap nets that slip back after 10 minutes are the first thing an auditor spots, so don't skimp on fit and size range.

White woven coats suit many areas. Whatever colour you choose, we'd code by zone so you spot anyone out of place at once. We looked for a credible source for specific colour coding or laundering rules and found none we could rely on, so what follows is practical advice rather than a claim: write your colour scheme down, keep it consistent, and agree laundering frequency and method with your QA lead.

Oversleeves cover the gap between glove and coat, and aprons add a wipe clean layer for wet work. Both should be disposable or washable on a schedule. Overshoes are for visitors and short visits. For your own staff, a dedicated site shoe usually beats them.

Visitor coats are the easiest item to forget. Visitors and contractors are covered by the same hair rule, so a visitor kit at the entrance should include a coat, a net and a snood, in sizes that fit.

Which gloves, and why does it matter so much?

Gloves are where most of your money and most of your foreign body risk sit.

Nitrile and vinyl are both common. Vinyl is usually cheaper per box. But a 1999 US study (Rego and Roley), which is old and American, found standard vinyl gloves failed 26 to 61% of the time after 20 minutes of manipulation, while nitrile and latex stayed around 1 to 5%. Gloves have changed since, so we wouldn't treat those figures as a spec. They're a reason to test your own.

Blue is the usual choice because it is rare in food. Metal detectable gloves exist (the detectors on your line are set to find them), and they make sense wherever a torn glove could end up in product. Detectamet, a supplier, lists poor fit, reusing disposables and non detectable items becoming foreign bodies among the common PPE mistakes.

Fatty foods deserve a question to your supplier. The test simulant for fatty foods is listed in Annex III of Regulation 10/2011, so ask for a declaration of compliance that states what the glove is suitable for. Ask for one every time, and file it.

What does a cheap glove really cost?

Look at cost per usable glove, not price per box. Say, illustratively, a box of 100 costs £5 and 20 gloves tear within a shift and get binned. That is 80 usable gloves for £5, so 6.25p each. Run 40 boxes a week and the gap adds up. A box of 100 at £5.60 with 3% failures gives 97 usable gloves, or about 5.8p each. The dearer box wins by about 0.5p a glove, and that's before you count the stopped line and the search for a missing fragment.

Those numbers are made up to show the sum. We'd do the real one on your line with you.

Not sure what your kit is costing you? We'll check it with you on site.

What is the safety footwear standard?

For safety footwear the current standard is EN ISO 20345:2022. According to a manufacturer's summary, it uses classes SB and S1 to S7, with S6 and S7 new and water resistant. A single slip resistance test (SR) replaces the old SRA, SRB and SRC marks, and variants such as S1P, S1PL and S1PS exist.

For steel versus composite toe caps near metal detectors, we couldn't find a credible independent source, so we make no claim. Our advice is to walk a test boot through your own detector at the sensitivity you actually run, and record the result.

What does it cost when this goes wrong?

Foreign body complaints are the loud cost, and you'll know it when one lands: customer time, product holds, a corrective action report. Audit non conformities are the quiet one, especially for hair, jewellery and clothing at entrances. And then there's the rebuying. If you buy a glove that rips, a net that slips or boots that don't grip, you'll buy again, and the old stock is still on your shelf.

Zone by zone: what to specify and how often to change it

At the entrance, we'd specify one size range for nets and snoods, a stock of visitor coats, and a boot or overshoe station. Check it's all stocked at the start of every shift.

In the changing room, coats go on only after hair is contained. Coats should come off before toilets and canteen and be changed at a schedule you set with QA.

At the production entrance, gloves go on last, after handwashing, and are blue. Replace them after breaks, tasks and any tear. In wet or messy zones, add oversleeves and an apron.

In high care or high risk areas, which BRCGS treats separately, use a distinct colour of coat and boots that stay in that zone. Go through the kit list with your QA lead, and check it against what your customers ask for.

Whoever supervises the line checks the kit at the start of shift, and QA audits the changing rooms weekly.

Frequently asked questions

Does the law say I must use hairnets?

No. Regulation 852/2004 says protective clothing where necessary and clean clothing. Hair coverage requirements come from standards like SALSA and BRCGS.

Who pays for PPE?

The employer, free of charge. Since April 2022 that includes limb (b) workers.

Are vinyl gloves allowed?

They can be, if suitable for the food and covered by a declaration of compliance. Test them in your own use.

How often should gloves be changed?

BRCGS is commonly summarised as requiring regular replacement. Set your own rule, such as after every break and any tear, and write it down.

Let us walk your changing rooms

We'll walk your changing rooms and production entrances with your operations team and set up a head to toe kit list by zone. It takes about 30 minutes, you get a written report, and there's no contract. We arrange testing only where needed.

Every client also gets their own login with every spec sheet, certificate and declaration of compliance for what they buy from us.

Email sales@kptrading.uk or call 020 4576 5500.