From April 1 this year, CTL will move its drycleaning token business to Accor, although it will continue as an independent company with other interests, and Accor will start selling its own Clean Way tokens.

Clean Way will take over both standard drycleaning tokens and also CTL’s specialist services for alterations and repairs and garment refurbishment.

Cleaning Tokens will continue to redeem all CTL tokens bought before April 1 and those already in circulation until the end of April 2002.

The Clean Way smart-card based drycleaning operation has been running in France for five years.

Clean Way’s general manager, Antoine Darbois told LCN that smart cards had been a great success in France and have helped to increase drycleaning business there. A great advantage of a smart card system is that it gives cleaners the means to offer a loyalty card. He hoped eventually to bring a card system to the UK, although initially Clean Way will sell conventional paper tokens.