Chapter and verse

Qatar snatches the limelight next year as host to the FIFA World Cup. Around 80,000 spectators will descend on it and 105 swanky new hotels will be vying for business when the event kicks off in November. All this hopefully will inject new fortunes into the laundry and cleaning sector, despite major labour reforms and the introduction of a new minimum wage in reaction to world criticism over the treatment of the country’s 400,000- plus low-wage migrant workforce. “Already the effect of Qatar World Cup has been noticed in hospitality and will be continue until early 2022,” says Majd Abulaban, Girbau’s Middle East managing director. Others, however, think more conservatively. Andre Tienemann, Kannegiesser’s sales manager for Asia and the Middle East says while the company had around 25 preliminary enquiries from potential customers wanting to build new laundries – some of them Government enquiries connected to the World Cup stadium – they failed to follow through and “popped like bubbles after a closer look”. Still, Qatar recently restored diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, ending a long-running boycott of the country and no doubt paving better business roads ahead.

Meanwhile Oman, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, is another Middle Eastern country oft escaping sparkling headlines. Bordered by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, it is home to Snowhite, part of Yahya Services, founded in 1974. Snowhite has 40 commercial outlets spread across the country servicing hotels including the Omran hotels contract, ISS, military and civil hospitals, polyclinics and construction companies. Snowhite’s Industrial laundry facility in Russayl has a production capacity of around 35,000 kg per day and is equipped with the latest state of the art, computerised equipment from USA, Italy and the UK. The plant is segmented into industrial, institutional, commercial and hospital areas. Snowhite also operates interior satellite production units at Sohar to serve northern Oman and Salalah to serve the south.

The Middle East is a part of the world where things are moving faster than elsewhere and that excites manufacturers such as Renzacci’s general sales and marketing director, Marco Niccolini. He says despite the pandemic’s effects, many projects are ongoing because there is a large quantity of capital – fuelled by the oil industry - sloshing around the region together with a consistent turnaround of money, particularly in the UAE. “Dubai at the centre, is keen on investing massive amounts of money,” says Niccolini, “and while (western) markets are slowing down, there it is spinning. Drycleaning is big there because of lavish furnishing, carpets and well-heeled citizens with specialised clothing and items. There is a lot of interest in using alternative solvents to PERC. Water shortages are a problem in the ME but for us that adds opportunities.”

In Saudi Arabia, Al Jabr Holding Company owns and operates five of the largest commercial laundry plants in the country. Established in 1974 in Al Hassa, other huge operations followed in Jubail, Riyadh, Jeddah and Riyadh (Al Sulay). These serve more than 500 receiving shops in cities and villages throughout the eastern province, Riyadh, Jeddah, Qasim and Kharj as well as government establishments, hospitals, military, businesses and more than 1,00,000 individual customers per week. AL Jabr also offers mobile carpet and upholstery cleaning.

Last year, sensing the demand in the luxury laundry sector, Mumbai-based entrepreneur Sachin Dewan teamed up with Al Jabr to launch Bianca, a laundry chain for luxury garments which swamp this country’s large elite. Dewan’s move was perhaps spurred on by Saudi’s blatant push - backed by Saudi royals - to push Riyadh onto the global catwalks. Hopefully, glamorous photoshoots will make way for Dubai-based DGrade, a company making clothing from plastic water bottles. Established in 2010, DGrade now reports 150,000 bottles per hour passing through washing until they turn into flakes, then fibre. DGrade targets uniform or work-wear companies across all sectors, developing 200 types of fabric from recycled polyester. It is worthy work, for the UAE produces a staggering 10 million recyclable bottles per day.

Large independent

NewGen, meanwhile, part of the UK-based Paragon company family, is one of the region’s largest independent commercial laundry companies with three operations in Doha (Qatar), Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. The latter is capable of cleaning around 70 tonnes of linen a day. NewGen says its innovative conservation practices save two to six times of energy and water consumed in normal processes. That’s paramount in this part of the world where extreme lack of water and heat dominate. Kannegiesser says air conditioned laundries there are rare and so it markets among other machinery switching cabinets with an air-conditioning segment to prevent shutdowns in spiralling temperatures.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Textile Service Market Analysis, published for the TRSA in 2020, analysed then ranked those countries and industry sectors generating the most significant demand for linen, uniform and facility services, plus growth rates to 2024. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia took centre stage with the biggest industry opportunities in the forever growing energy and hotel sectors, followed by construction, then healthcare and lastly, manufacturing. The EIU’s Middle East/Africa forecast blames sluggish growth across core demand sectors and structural constraints for suppressing the region’s linen, uniform and facilities services industry, and states that government investment priorities will define the outlook for textile services. “Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 for infrastructure should help workwear,” reports the EIU. “A flourishing middle class is viewed as supporting growing demand for flat linen and workwear from the hotel and healthcare sectors.” For more see www.trsa.org/globalanalysis.

Dedicated apps

The introduction of dedicated apps has catalysed dramatic change across the Middle East’s laundry shop landscape, especially in the UAE where physical stores have morphed into virtual ones with hip new images that consumers can identify with. The metamorphosis is down to smart young entrepreneurial companies such as Laundryheap which expanded rapidly last year in the ME and other parts of the world, offering door-to-door laundry and drycleaning services. Laundryheap launched in Dubai and is now in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait and reports customer growth tripling this year. Opportunity knocked during the pandemic. It introduced a new ‘virus wash’ and extra hot cleaning services and made its supply chain more sustainable through green cleaning techniques and low-carbon transport. Result? Reported growth of 60-80% month-on-month.

Washmen, another Dubai-based startup was founded in 2015 by Rami Shaar and Jad Halaoui. It kicked off by garnering logistics partners and high-quality laundromat facilities to pick up, clean, iron, and next day delivery for a price at least 25% less than its premium rivals. A wash and fold service (priced per bag) was added and Washmen currently serves more than 30,000 individual customers. It processes 300,000 plus items a month, from two current facilities (its latest is a new 300,000 sq. ft. facility in Dubai). The co-founders reportedly believe they gained an edge by building their own facilities. Cleverly, Washmen also offers to collect its customers’ plastic and paper recyclables in a Washmen bag, upping its green credentials. Strategy, Shaar recently told Entrepreneur Middle East, is based more on customer retention than acquisition.

Going online

Online laundry services firm JustClean introduced its marketplace application for the $3 billion laundry industry in the Gulf region in 2018. The brainchild of Kuwaiti brothers Athbi and Nouri Al-Enezi, it now has more than 100 laundry businesses in the UAE. This technology company predicts the industry could be an almost exclusively online business in the region within five years.

Kannegiesser’s Tienemann says while the hospital sector offers limited opportunities in central Middle East, Israel, with fast growth, is the exception. Much of the commercial and on-premise laundry sectors are, of course, closely tied to the fortunes of the hospitality sector, mothballed like the rest of the world by Covid. But Kannegiesser, Girbau and Renzacci among others agree hotel developments now are racing back on track across the region, not least in seemingly unstoppable Dubai. The Dubai Government continuously reinvents the wheel to maintain its position as a regional centre for economic excellence. Its urban masterplan – revised seven times since 1960 when it first hatched its development plan – was last revisited in March this year when Dubai determined to uphold development steps to be, by 2040, ‘the best city for living in the world.’ By then, the emirate’s population is forecast to rise to 5.8 million compared with 3.3 million in 2020.

By the year-end, 79 hotels with 26,168 rooms are expected to have launched in Dubai. Another 34 openings are scheduled for 2022. In 2023, another 11 new hotels are planned while 29 more projects are projected for 2024 and beyond. Of the new properties, 76 will be in the four-star category, the remaining 77 in the five-star segment. Great news for the laundry industry

TRSA BUBBLES UP IN MIDDLE EAST

The innovative TRSA has just launched a new Middle East Chapter together with its Dubai-based member, Rent-A-Towel (RNT), a pioneering linen rental services in Dubai.

One of the TRSA’s first missions is to introduce Hygienically Clean certifications for laundries. It also wants to bring to the ME professional-development programs for managers and supervisors, The UAE’s Bubble Laundry is the first to join the chapter. Bubble concentrates on serving hospitality and healthcare with integrated laundry and textile leasing solutions. Information sharing and networking will be key while the chapter also offers general operator membership to any business or government entity operating laundries. Those who cater to, serve or sell equipment or supplies or services to laundry operators may become supplier partner members. And college students considering a career in the linen uniform and facility services industry can also join. Learn more at me.trsa.org