Happy anniversary

The year 2010 marks a significant birthday for Laundry and Cleaning News which will be celebrating its 125th anniversary in December.

In business, longevity is a cause for celebration, for marking achievements and remembering and thanking those who have helped in successes. As you will note from the special logos on the cover the journal is already looking forward to this particular birthday.

The textile care industry has a long tradition of adaptability and innovation that it should be proud of. Many of its members are long established and indeed in recent years we’ve seen a spate of anniversaries marking a half century or even longer. Some companies, like LCN, go back to the late 19th century.

The time from the late 1940s through to the1960s saw the establishment of some of today’s leading manufacturers such as H J Weir, Kannegiesser, Milnor, Jensen and Girbau, the last two marking half centuries this year. The Worshipful Company of Launderers marks its 50th birthday this year.

Survival has not been easy either for the industry or for its individual members but nevertheless those involved in the textile care sectors have shown remarkable resilience and an ability to innovate and respond positively to change.

Hence, we’ve seen the growth of textile rental, a movement pioneered in the UK by Arthur Kennedy, innovations in equipment such as the tunnel washer and drycleaning machines that have undergone several generations of development to become the energy and solvent efficient machines we see now.

One of the biggest challenges has been the environment and a growing awareness that the Earth’s resources are not infinite.

The industry has responded well, manufacturers by developing resource saving technologies and forward thinking practitioners by adopting these and realising that saving resources has cost and efficiency benefits.

Industry associations have played a much needed role in helping guide members through the complexities of regulation and making sure that the textile care industries’ voice is heard when proposed regulation seems unnecessarily punitive.

So we have much to celebrate and much to remember and LCN’s December issue will include anniversary inspired articles that will do just that.

As part of this commemoration I invite readers to send me reminiscences of events they see as a truly memorable part of the textile care tradition.