Walk into any busy warehouse, distribution centre, or food manufacturing site in New Zealand and you will find one thing they all have in common: painted lines on the floor.
Those lines do a lot of heavy lifting. They separate people from forklifts, guide truck drivers safely to loading docks, and tell workers where they can and cannot stand. Done well, they save lives. Done poorly, they are an accident waiting to happen.
ShopCare Charitable Trust has developed standardised line marking guidance for commercial and industrial sites across New Zealand, in partnership with WorkSafe NZ and funded by ACC. For food and beverage sites — where heavy vehicles, powered mobile plant, and pedestrians regularly share the same spaces — it is directly relevant.
Why line marking matters
Line marking sits at the engineering end of the hierarchy of controls. Unlike training or signage alone, well-designed floor markings create a visible, consistent system that communicates at a glance: this is where people walk; that is where vehicles operate; here is where you stop.
The evidence supports this. WorkSafe New Zealand has identified the failure to exclude workers from areas where forklifts are operating as a key issue found during site inspections, noting that forklifts have been killing and maiming people for many years with little evidence the risk is being appropriately managed.
WorkSafe's position is clear: pedestrians and moving plant need to be segregated to avoid fatalities. Line marking is the foundational tool for doing that. (WorkSafe, 2023; WorkSafe, Fatal interactions between forklifts and people)
Inconsistency has been a persistent challenge across New Zealand's supply chain. Different sites use different colours, symbols and layouts, so workers who move between sites are constantly interpreting an unfamiliar system. Standardisation reduces that risk.
Read more in the latest issue here
