Drycleaning finishing

High finishing standards help to improve business

1 June 2011



Well specified finishing equipment will help drycleaners to achieve consistently high standards that help to satisfy customers and encourage repeat business. Alongside presses and ironing tables, multiformers are becoming popular and specialist shirt finishers are seen as a growth area. Janet Taylor reports


Finishing is often regarded as one of the most important aspects of a drycleaner’s work as customers judge results by the final appearance.

The choice of equipment used is important. Drycleaners need to finish a wide range of garments and materials, though typically the most common items will be trousers, jackets and skirts. In addition many cleaners are now offering a shirt service.

Stephen Pick at Service Machinery Limited (SML), distributor for the Veit range, points out that traditionally High Street cleaners would use a scissor press with the addition of a utility buck for shaping.

While these produce excellent results, skilled press operators can be hard to find. With a greater reliance on volume as the market becomes ever-more competitive, automated methods that rely less on the operator’s skills are becoming popular.

Asked about the main types of equipment used, suppliers’ views differ slightly.

Renzacci UK says that while there are many specialist pieces of equipment available to cope with many of the repetitive tasks, cleaners do need to have the volumes to justify the investment although the results can be excellent.

For a general trade, the company recommends a highly specified finishing table but it warns that it is a mistake to stint on such basic equipment – an underspecified board could prove a poor investment if it only does half the number of jobs needed. The recommendation is to get the specification right, then ask the equipment’s price.

One consideration that LCN contributor Roger Cawood has pointed out in his articles in the journal, is that the table should be easy to use by both right-handed and left-handed operators.

At Dane Realstar, Sheila Higgs says that in the present economic environment, a High Street cleaner must clean and finish all types of garment from suits, dresses and coats to household items such as linens and curtains.

Cleaners will therefore need to consider their particular pricing structure. If they are trying to be highly competitive then they will need to handle high volumes and, by implication, they will need automated equipment that can cope with these.

Higgs reminds that quality finishing is a must when trying to retain customers.

Skills are only gained with years of practice and she recommends newcomers to the drycleaning business to consider a training course such as those offered by the Guild of Cleaners & Launderers. This training is invaluable in learning how to avoid problems to make sure that customers keep returning.

Renzacci also points to the importance of correct training and says that start-up businesses in particular should send staff on courses in operating the equipment.

The company offers its own courses, which are led by industry experts. These cover not only the proper use of equipment but also specialist areas such as material identification and stain removal.

Talking about the choice of equipment, Pick at SML outlines some of the options with their pros and cons.

Rotor cabinets are a popular choice. They provide a form for finishing jackets and a topper function for trousers or skirts on a second, rotating form. The advantages include an overlap of processing, the ability to finish one garment while loading the next, and lower skill requirements. As the garments are enclosed during finishing, excess steam or hot air can be vented away so the working environment is cooler.

Disadvantages include a greater need for touch-up for several reasons. The garment cannot be accessed during forming so wrinkles that appear during the process will be set into the finish. The jacket former’s inflating bag presses the lining into the outer so linings often need a top-up to achieve the best quality. As most cabinets do not have a tensioning system seams may need a touch-up.

Veit believes the best finish is achieved with dedicated machines such as Veit’s 8362 multiformer and 8741 topper.

Multiformers can process jackets, coats up to 1.5m high and even polo shirts and knitwear.

Such machines have several advantages. Operators do not need to be highly skilled as the former does the work. The process is repeatable and results are consistent. Jacket linings are fully finished. Garments can be adjusted or smoothed during the cycle. Drycleaned or washed/wetcleaned garments can be handled. Powerful tensioning ensures a high standard on seams on linings.

Dedicated toppers can finish trousers, shorts and skirts and have many of the same advantages. Veit also says that they are effective on denim jeans and anti-stretch features make them suitable for materials such as spandex.

Pick sees few disadvantages to dedicated machines. They do need more space and the initial investment is high but the higher productivity that results from the time saved on touch-up and lower skill requirements help to offset these.

He says that the post-finishing touch-up is the single most unnecessary task and the company trains cleaners to touch-up areas such as pocket flaps or linings on a table before transferring to an adjacent multiformer. The company also teaches workflow patterns that optimise productivity.

As well as finishing the routine items – jackets, coats, dresses, skirts – some cleaners may want to compete by venturing into more specialised areas. Renzacci UK advises that businesses do need to be serious about such ventures to justify the investment needed. If the business actively markets these extra services, then it should buy the best equipment to do the job. Improvements in efficiency, productivity and customer loyalty will justify the extra cost.

Although there are many specialist areas including niche services, most suppliers quote shirt finishing as the growth area. Sheila Higgs at Dane Realstar says it is the fastest growing sector and the company offers a full range of blown-finishers manufactured by Sidi. Machines range the modestly-priced Easyform 2000 and 3000 to the top of the range Sidi Major Plus which is high-tech but easy to use.

Dane Realstar has recently introduced shirt finishing machines from the Italian company Fimas. The Fimas 296 air-operated shirt finisher is designed for use on both wet and dry shirts and gives a crisp, firm finish to the garment’s body yoke and shoulders. It can finish long and short sleeves and the sleeve placket.

One operator can finish 45 – 60 shirts, of varying sizes, per hour. ?The dummy has full vacuum to keep small shirts in place , large pressing plates and an adjustable sleeve height function to stretch sleeve creases independently during the pressing cycle. It is complemented by the 387 collar and cuff press.

James Holt, managing director of Parrisianne Dry Cleaning Solutions the distributor for Sankosha equipment, says that Sankosha’s success in growing the shirt finishing sector has meant that cleaners are now seeing an increasing volume of women’s shirts. Both Holt’s company and Sankosha predicted that this would happen and this led to the development of the MF250E multi-form finisher to process varying designs of women’s professional shirts, blouses, gent’s slim fit shirts and beach shirts.

The MF2250E includes a microprocessor control panel, pedal operation for fully automatic or one-step processing and heated front clamp. It can be used to finish wet shirts so there is no need to fully dry them before finishing and it can produce up to 40 shirts an hour.

The DF050EV3 is another Sankosha machine developed with the women’s market in mind. Intended for all types of jackets and coats, it is based on the DF100E but has a smaller body form but will still handle men’s jackets.

The latest development from Renzacci UK is the Pony Angel shirt finisher. The company says that this machine has been developed to solve two problems that can often spoil the appearance of a pressed shirt.

The first problem occurs at the lower sides where the material splays out. Sharp creases are often created in this area because the buck shape cannot fit every shirt. Pony solved the problem by fitting two tensioner sliders that pull the shirt taut while the airbag inflates to give a smooth result.

Sleeve plackets, the area where sleeve and cuff meet, are also difficult to press. Pony has developed pneumatic, adjustable height sleeve tensioning to prevent overpressing of the blown sleeve.

The Pony Angel can finish up to 60 shirts per minute and Renzacci says this speed is achievable because there is no need for final touch-ups.

The machine also has Teflon-coated bucks to avoid shining, even on dark garments. The coating also makes it easy to clean the bucks and remove starch residues. This has proved very popular so the same coating is now also used on the CCP collar and cuff press.

Stephen Pick at Veit also believes that shirt finishing is a growth area and he believes that it can justify the investment in equipment at a level of around 80 shirts a day. He says that some cleaners still sub-contract the service even though they have under-used staff that could easily be taught to operate a shirt finisher and would have the time to do so if they were working on automated equipment.

He recommends such businesses to review the economics of offering the service on the premises and predicts that the money saved by taking the service on site could pay for a shirt finisher in “a little over a year.” Veit also offers a Universal finisher, which as well as acting as a former for jackets and coats can also finish shirts to a high standard. The Universal finisher also has a slimmer body than many shirt machines and can therefore be used for women’s blouses which are perfectly suited to a blown finish.

Veit continuously develops its product range. The company has sought ways of increasing energy efficiency. The 8326 shirt finisher has a heat re-cycling option, which can reduce running costs by up to 25%.




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