28 Feb Tips for Running a Commercial Laundry
To first answer the question in relation to the best laundry and cleaning supplies, we must first understand the business setting from within these cleaning products will be used. The first point is we need to understand our customer’s business, are they a nursing home or healthcare setting? Are they a onsite laundry? Or are they a hotel or other institution with specific guidelines and protocols when it comes to purchasing laundry detergents and cleaning chemical products.
Ward hygiene is a company with a proactive and professional approach to the hygiene and healthcare services industry. We believe that to fully understand our client’s needs, carry out a site visit and present an exciting proposal to support a service-based set of standards is the only and best way to serve a customer’s needs.
Best practice for on-site report and services structures
Let’s first look at the laundry care area of your business. We often find that when we visit our client on-site that the service from the incumbent supplier is seriously lacking. With dosing tubing and pump heads generally severely underserviced and calibration out of whack. The reason being is that the end-user is simply not getting the service they need and deserve from their supplier. A box-dropping trend has appeared in the hygiene industry and a gaping hole has appeared, a hole that Ward Hygiene intends to fill.
Commercial on-site laundry set up and tips
Ward Hygiene has an active approach to the service of our customer’s accounts. We treat our customers like we would expect to be treated ourselves. Let’s take a brief look into a commercial laundry business and some of the challenges they may face on a daily basis. The general commercial laundry business will have a go-to area of their business, let’s say a wash and fold general laundry service. In this instance, they would normally use a bio or non-bio laundry detergent and fabric softener. From there they may have an additional service where they wash and iron bed linen or shirts. When it comes to shirts we need a general stain remover, this can be in spray, powder, or additional chemicals introduced normally within the pre-wash cycle. If we are dealing with a meat plant or a client who needs to wash blood-stained or meat proteins from the items we need to be very careful about high temperatures within the wash cycle. The Best practice would be to have a low-temperature pre-wash cycle and then introduce a stain booster chemical to assist in the breakdown of the proteins or bloodstains. The same practices can be adhered to when looking at a laundry service that would mainly take care of table linens for example.
Why we need to be careful with temperatures within the wash cycle is quite simply because we do not want to bake the stains into the garment or fabric. We also need to carry out a water hardness test on-site to ascertain whether the client would be better served placing a water softener on-site.
This could reduce the need to overdose chemicals and keep the annual running costs lower than otherwise would be.
We work closely with our partners at Electrolux Laundry Care systems and they have revolutionized the wet wash laundry care services sector. Laundries now have the state of the art equipment to wash highly-priced and valuable items without the risk of damage. It is not uncommon for a garment or dress to be washed with a wet wash system costing several thousand euros without the need for harsh chemicals normally used in the dry cleaning processes. Therefore prolonging the life of these valuable garments.
Chemical on-site dosing systems an overview
At Ward Hygiene we establish after a water hardness test, what recommendations in relation to the supply of on-site chemicals for our clients. In some cases, we offer a standard system of 2-3 chemicals, a sanitiser, degreaser, glass and stainless steel cleaner etc. In other cases like a recent customers, requirements are for the very highest disinfection and certification our industry has to offer. In this setting, we put in place a product called Peracide tablets. This product is a product used by the NHS supply chain and is tested in soiled and clean settings to the very highest standards. Our client will use the tablets and apply them to all hard surfaces with a backpack mist sprayer unit. Saving time and most importantly as it is a sealed laboratory setting killing spores and bacteria after 30 seconds. The reason for showing this system is to demonstrate the level of understanding required before placing a hygiene system on location, why? Well simply put every customer’s set of requirements and environments are different.
We also are a registered fitter of the state of the art dosing systems from Brightwell dispensers U.K.
Best practice requires a walk-through, an understanding, and a proposal supplied by any hygiene service provider. Also, a suite of documentation and an agreed service plan to calibrate equipment, train staff in the correct use of chemicals both from an efficiency standpoint, and health and safety are paramount. We say to our customers always demand the very best, never settle for less than the very best the industry has to offer. After all isn’t it the health and wellness of humankind we are talking about? If the recent pandemic has shown us anything it is simply that we on the whole were indeed complacent when it came to hygiene standards.
