UK
The Textile Services Association (TSA) Congress in Southampton, 5 February, was opened by Charlie Betteridge, chair of the Association. It was the largest TSA Congress ever, he told delegates at the salubrious Southampton Harbour Hotel, with 33 laundry companies represented by their owners, managing directors and CEOs.
As well as interesting and informative papers from various experts there was time for informal chats and networking and the whole event was crowned with an appearance by Harry Redknapp, England footballing legend, who proved himself a talented raconteur and teller of humorous and scurrilous tales.
TSA CEO David Stevens stepped on to the stage after Betteridge’s welcome to say: “We’ve arranged some excellent speakers for you today, and it’s great to see that over 80% of attendees are non-suppliers.” Which of course offered added value for the Premium Supplier sponsors – ABS, Christeyns, Ecolab, Jensen, Kannegiesser, Richard Haworth, Tonrose, vision, and WSI. Stevens extended thanks to the Premium suppliers saying: “I would like to extend a sincere thank you to our Premium Suppliers for their continued support. Your contribution is invaluable and much appreciated.”
“Why choose Southampton for the venue this year?” asked Stevens. “It deals annually with 2.6 million cruise ship passengers. Er, Rishi Sunak was born here. It is the largest cruise ship port in the UK.”
Stevens also outlined the TSA training programme for this year which includes an impressive number of workshops, seminars, webinars and events, testament to the Association’s commitment to best practice at all levels. They include Health &Safety; Sustainability; Laundry Open Week, PUWER safety inspections training; and Microbiology among others.
More on this in a later report
Stevens also announced the launch of Glare (Global Laundry and Rental Emissions Platform). The TSA has launched its Global Laundry and Rental Emissions (GLARE) carbon calculation platform, which has been designed to help commercial laundries in the UK – and around the world – measure their carbon footprint. This will enable them to meet their carbon reporting requirements and will play a vital role in the TSA’s roadmap for the laundry industry to meet its targets for carbon reduction by 2045 ahead of the UK government’s commitments by 2050.
UK PLC has already made some significant inroads in reducing its carbon emissions, with a total reduction of 9.3% since 2019 and 3.5% of that occurring after 2021. GLARE is based on the Green House Gas protocol to allow the laundry industry to record and track carbon emissions using the well-established methodology. Measuring the carbon emissions will then enable the users of the platform to report and implement effective carbon reduction plans.
More on this in a later report.
Powerful words
The first keynote speaker to take to the podium was Mohammed Qahtani. Stevens explained: “I first came across his work while on holiday. My wife was watching his video, and we knew we had to invite him. It also helped as he is a World Champion Public Speaker and a TEDx speaker six times. His talk today is titled ‘The Power of Words’. We’re delighted to have him here, having flown in from Saudi Arabia to be with us. Qahtani told of his struggles overcoming. A stutter in his early years before beating it to become the first Muslim, the first Arab and the first Saudi to win the Toastmasters International Speech Contest in seven rounds and in a field that included 33,000 competitors from around the world. He urged managers to say ‘Well done’ to employees and colleagues, probably the most powerful words in the work context.
Hospitality in numbers
Congress then heard from Ryandeep Bains, business development manager at STR, a leading specialist in data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry. Bains leads STR’s Industry Partner Business Development work in the UK and Ireland and is focused on scaling the benchmark product across Europe.
His presentation, ‘Hospitality in Numbers’ was an eye opener. The UK and Ireland is top of the charts across the whole of Europe for room occupancy. According to Bains the middle market generally is not moving but top end and budget hotels are booming, realising 102% occupancy rates. Occupancy has returned to pre-2019 levels across the whole year of 2024.
More on this in a later report.
Hatch Report
The TSA sponsored a new Hatch Report and released it at the Congress, showing economic value of the textile services sector to the UK economy. Presenter Tim Fanning, a director at Hatch, the sector’s direct economic contribution amounted to 22,000 jobs, £1.6 bn sales which in turn generate £1.1 bn gross value added and a £130 million Exchequer contribution.
Consider also – on a weekly basis more than 53 million textile items are processed by textile care services in the UK. At peak, up to 75 million textile items are processed a week.
More on this in a later report.
Save 60% on energy?
Not one laundry owner or MD attending the conference wouldn’t like to save 60% on energy costs and Gerald Zotter from ecop reckons the company’s heat pump could soon do just that for them. As we transition from 90% gas/10% electric use the UK laundry industry is looking closely at its energy demand of 2.89 TWh and using Waste heat from post-washing processes to feed it. It is also hunting for Government finding to head off the effects of CapEx and innovating with new technologies. Heat pumps do have proof of concept but will they work well in industrial laundries? Zotter believes they will. At the moment, he said, nearly 50% of industrial laundry and dryers’ total input energy is being lost as waste heat.
ecop presents a world first and revolutionizes heat pump technology once again. In principle, the Rotation Heat Pump already opens up completely new application possibilities for industrial heat pumps. The new model now combines it with diffusion bonding technology, making it even more efficient.
Diffusion bonding involves etching channels into stainless steel plates. These are then bonded together in a high-tech process to form a solid block. In the case of ecop, this block consists of many layers that alternately carry the gas for the heat pump process and the heat transfer medium for heat exchange. In total, there are around 300,000 channels, which were designed in a complex construction process with many simulations so that the entire heat pump process takes place within this block – not just the heat exchange.
The advantages: There are no more relatively moving parts, the robust block rotates as a whole and only requires connections for the working medium and for water. This design enables significantly higher pressures and rotational speeds, which results in a greater temperature range. Hardly any seals are required, which means that much higher temperatures can be run. And finally, the entire system is extremely robust, reliable and low maintenance.
It is also relatively small and has almost halved in size compared to the previous model to 6m x 2m x 1.5m. It is also perfectly scalable: If you attach several blocks, you directly increase the output. If you make the blocks smaller or larger, you can realize smaller or larger output levels.
This leads to the following concrete advantages:
• Temperature lift of over 100 K
• Output temperature of over 200° C
• Even more flexibility
• Increased efficiency
• Maximum reliability
• Still an environmentally friendly working medium, low space requirement, safe working environment
The new model will be available from 2025 and TSA is now working with ecop to find a pilot UK laundry to install the technology for trialling.
Extra time
Harry Redknapp wound up the proceedings and was absolutely hilarious, holding his audience enraptured with his football stories. He thinks players are no better today than illustrious predecessors like Jimmy Greaves, Bill Nicholson, Pelé (whom he idolised), Bobby Moore, Frank Lampard – so many names, and he knew them all. No, he just thinks pitches are better, boots are better. He also thinks players get paid too much nowadays but he is philosophical, saying: “You can’t blame them. If you were offered it, you would take it, wouldn’t you?”
He talked about growing up hard in London and, after becoming a pro, still playing football in the park with jumpers for goalposts, albeit with his well-known team mates, including Bobby Moore who he first met at 15 when paying alongside him in West Ham youth team. (Was Redknapp actually the inspiration for Paul Whitehouse’s Ron Manager character in BBC’s The Fast Show?)
Well, Harry Redknapp may be the best manager England never had, but he is definitely one of the best speakers – all off the cuff, no notes – for the inspirational spot at a conference. He can really lift a room. The applause at the end of his speech was witness to how much the audience had enjoyed it. Much kudos to the TSA for booking him.
