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Stand by your beds! Linen production in all its many forms faces challenges this year – but tough conditions promote innovation and so production processes are streamlined and suppliers bend over backwards to smooth the way. Kathy Bowry reports. Hospitality and healthcare linen providers have their work cut out dealing with challenges thrown up by the energy crisis, lack of skilled labour in the UK and other global factors affecting linen supply.
Refreshed and renewed
A tough decision to change tack is actually the road to new opportunities, says WLE managing director Ross Weir. The past few years have seen many changes and none more so than for Rob and Ross Weir, managing directors of HJ Weir, the long-established family-owned British manufacturer of flatwork finishing equipment.
Promise for premises
As utilities prices rocket and operators feel the pinch, OPL is coming in for more scrutiny from businesses that are currently outsourcing and ones that are looking to upgrade to more efcient machinery. So what is available for them? As a manufacturer of large industrial machines, Lapauw may not be the first name that comes to mind for an OPL laundry planner but the company is no stranger to the sector, as it has equipped many hotels and resorts with machines that increase productivity and efficiency significantly, from washerextractors to dryers and through to the ironing/finishing line.
Investment equals increased efficiencies
A £1million spend on new plant has increased efciencies and enabled sustainability goals to be achieved at Barker in Dorset. At Dorset-based Barker, which claims to be the largest domestic laundry in the UK and a leading specialist drycleaner, there is optimism in the air, says the company. During the latter part of 2022 the business invested nearly £1 million in new plant and machinery, with works having recently reached completion.
TRSA seminar series on seeding a new plant
USA
Thursday, 16 March 16 sees TRSA, the North America trade association for the linen rental industry, launch a new series of virtual seminars a addressing the procedures involved in building a new plant. Over three sessions, attendees can compare Arway Linen and Uniform Rental Service’s early stages of planning to replace their legacy facility with tactics others may have used or contemplated to re-engineer their own businesses.
European software group acquires Germany’s SoCom
EUROPE
The software group Everfield has acquired the Bavarian software company SoCom Informationssysteme GmbH. This is Everfield’s first investment in Germany on its way to becoming a pan-European group of B2B software companies. SoCom has developed a full-fledged ERP system for the textile care industry and is one of Europe’s leading providers in this segment. Everfield aims to help SoCom achieve long-term and sustainable growth.
TSA Congress: Charitable multi-bank pays dividends in hope and sustainability
UK
Investing in a charitable ‘multi-bank’ project will pay dividends for those in poverty in the UK and in sensible and sustainable end-of-life arrangements for laundry linens as they are re-used by people who really need them, said ex-premier Gordon Brown in his address to the Textile Services Association (TSA) annual National Congress in Edinburgh.
Sir John Curtice: Three years on, the Brexit zeitgeist has changed
UK
The Textile Services Association (TSA) annual National Congress in Edinburgh, 9 February, saw Sir John Curtice presented a paper on the vexed question of Brexit and its repercussions three years on. He is Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, and Senior Research Fellow, NatCen Social Research and the ESRC’s ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’ initiative. He has written extensively about voting behaviour in the UK, and British political and social attitudes. He is also a familiar figure from countless appearances on BBC elections specials as the resident statistician.
TSA Congress beats a path to Edinburgh
UK
The Textile Services Association (TSA) annual National Congress in Edinburgh got under way on Thursday 9 February and there was plenty for CEO David Stevens to report on, from lobbying the Government for more help in the energy crisis, through rocketing costs, the labour shortage, training programmes to positive initiatives on mental health and sustainability strategies. There was also a cracking list of speakers and presenters lined up for the event with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown topping the list.
Pioneering Bristol café-launderette to close
UK
Bristol-based sisters Ellen, Cassie and Lily (pictured) have announced that At The Well café-launderette will be closing for business at the end of March 2023. The three sisters opened this unique community facility in Stokes Croft in the summer of 2012, following a nine-month renovation of Bristol’s first coin-op laundrette, which had previously stood derelict for over a decade.