SHAPING UP with shirts

Successful, high volume shirt business unequivocally needs robust equipment. If a shirt unit does not provide both excellent quality across a wide range of shirt fabrics and the ability to finish large numbers of shirts month after month, year after year, then its suitability is in serious doubt.

The significant demands made of shirt finishing equipment are clearly seen at Blue Dragon’s plant at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, and at the Ashley Cook laundry at Woking, Surrey.

For shirt finishing at both loca#tions, BMM Weston equipment was chosen because of the way in which it can deliver top grade results over a long period.

Mr Colin Hill, managing director of Blue Dragon, says: “We looked at other systems, but these were nowhere nearly robust enough for doing our amount of processing.” Blue Dragon selected the BMM Weston All-In-One unit and with this, Mr Hill says, one operator can finish about 40 shirts an hour to a standard considered fully acceptable.

Particularly attractive about the All-In-One unit is the speed of operation, enhanced by efficient blowing and vacuum features. Dressing the body of the shirt is proving to be much easier and faster than previously.

The equipment used before#, also from BMM Weston, had served the business well for 20 years but was beginning to show signs of wear. It was considered it was time to update and take advantage of new technology.

The All-In-One unit handles, with ease, standard business cotton shirts, dress shirts, and denim and other thick cotton leisure shirts.

Mr Hill says that shirts with collar sizes from 15 to 17 are easily and straightforwardly finished to an excellent standard. Shirts with size 18 collar and greater may need to have some hand finishing. The current trend for shirts to have fuller—even baggy—sleeves presents no problem thanks to the blowing action in the sleeves.

The unit is easy to operate, Mr Hill comments, and he notes that the operator derives substantial and continuous job satisfac#tion from turning wrinkled, damp shirts into crisply pressed dry ones.

On average, some 1000 shirts a week are fed to the Beaconsfield plant from five shops and from domestic service van rounds.

Most shirt service customers are regulars, usually supplying five to seven shirts a week to the business, although some customers have as many as 12 shirts a week processed. Shirts are usually taken to the shops by men, and Saturday mornings tend to be the busiest time for delivery and collection of shirts.

The Blue Dragon shirt service is tailored to each customer’s requirements. As standard, a shirt is either folded and placed in a clear plastic pack or is put on a hanger. Starching and hand finishing are options. The ticketing system allows for personal preferences to be met—a customer might like shirts starched and folded, for example.

Another BMM Weston All-In-One unit has been installed at Blue Dr#agon’s Hillingdon plant.

At Ashley Cook’s Woking plant, a BMM Weston Compact Double Buck Shirt Press with Vacuum is at the heart of a shirt unit handling some 3500 shirts a week. These are fed to the plant from four shops and from van rounds. As with Blue Dragon, men deposit and collect most of the shirts at the shops.

Roseanne Logue, general manager of Ashley Cook, points to how vacuum assists the dressing of the shirts on the body formers.“The machine does much of the work, she comments. “BMM Weston equipment is the leader as far as I’m concerned.” The shirt unit handles a wide range of shirt sizes and fabrics.The equipment, which replaces long-serving BMM Weston machinery, has increased product#ion of shirts by 15%. A production rate of 95 shirts an hour with three good operators can be achieved, but a rate of 90 per hour is more usual.

Ray Sheldrick, sales director of BMM Weston, and Tony Dickens, laundry products field sales manager, say that BMM Weston shirt units are becoming increasingly popular — with drycleaning shops, specialist shirt finishers, general laundries and five star hotels.