Consuming chemicals

1 October 2001



If laundries have been forced by their customers to change, so too have their own chemicals suppliers. Glenn Tomkins reports


The laundry business today is, in many ways, unrecognisable from the laundry business of a few years ago. It has become, in boardroom spin, “lean and mean”. What that means is it’s been forced to contend with customers expecting more for less money, a greater variety of textiles to clean and the constant fear that today’s competitor will be tomorrow’s owner. The knock-on effect is that laundries are demanding more of their suppliers, especially chemicals’ suppliers.

Charlie Betteridge, European marketing director with Christeyns, says: “In the last few years there has been a noticeable change in the market. A ‘laundry’ has to offer a greatly increased service. The days of just washing textiles and delivering them are long gone.”

Laundries are now required to clean many more fabrics than was once the norm. According to Mr Betteridge: “Healthcare textiles have also moved on from green cotton sheets to microfibres and laminates. The traditional blue overall has been replaced by multi-coloured uniforms. All these changes bring with them a multitude of handling problems in terms of washing and drying.”

The pressure on suppliers from laundries is felt across the board. Robert Cole, sales director, Cole & Wilson, says: “Most laundry managers say that they have problems with [chemicals] companies not meeting requirements on quality and service and also not using the chemicals in the best way. In our opinion, the most important aspect is technical service; our customers expect it.”

And rationalisation of the business has meant that chemicals’ suppliers have had to work hard to keep up. Mr Betteridge says: “The large groups are getting bigger, becoming more international and more professional and expect a more professional service from their suppliers. As a ‘soap supplier’, we no longer just deliver a few bags of soap. Dosing equipment, management information systems, water treatment units have all become part of the service that a professional supplier must develop and offer.”

Bill Conley, marketing director with Henkel-Ecolab’s Textile Hygiene Division, goes along with that view. He says: “To be successful, we need to supply specific solutions to each laundry. Because laundries are focused on healthcare, hospitals, hospitality and so on, we need to have a modular approach.”

Questions, questions

What do laundries ask chemicals’ suppliers? DiverseyLever’s Colin Stubbs has a list: can we have it cheaper?; can we have it quicker?; can we tell them what is happening in the wash aisle?; and can we provide water management help?

Mr Stubbs’s answer to each question is yes, if the customer cooperates. For example: “We cannot just drop detergent prices, but we can help manage their resources better to give a total cost reduction. We can deliver quicker if the customer is accurate with the requirements and we plan these on our systems in advance. We can supply systems that are a management tool… [which] report machine utilisation, chemical use and cost… and a host of other data.”

Christeyns is also used to providing a service that goes beyond its duty. “As a rule if anything goes wrong we get asked to sort it out or at least find the root of the problem,” says Charlie Betteridge. “The cause almost certainly has nothing to do with our product, but it is our job to help to find the cause and… even sort it out ourselves if we can.”

Ignored and not understood

Training is a major issue, not least because health and safety data printed on all packaging is “ignored or not understood”, according to Mr Betteridge.

Colin Stubbs also believes there is high need for training. “Laundries, and to a large extent detergent suppliers,” he says, “have deskilled the industry with ‘hands-off’ systems that, whilst introducing obvious benefits, have taken away the need to really think about what happens in a process. DiverseyLever is promoting the need to reintroduce the skill to make everyone understand what we are doing and why.”

Mr Stubbs’s company offers staff training from basic to advanced on a customer’s site or at the training centre in Sherwood Park, Nottingham.

Robert Cole adds: “It is vitally important to give training on efficient usage of the products as overdosing causes just as many problems as underdosing, and it is in my company’s interests for the laundries to get the best out of our products.”

Training needs to cover handling chemicals, whether powder or liquid, and the legal requirements regarding wearing protective equipment. Henkel-Ecolab runs regular English-language training courses in Düsseldorf, Germany.

“It is very important,” says Charlie Betteridge, “that laundry personnel are aware of the risks involved with handling these chemicals especially with liquid products… Our technicians therefore always attempt to ensure that a new member of staff is aware of the potential risks.”

To illustrate his point, Mr Betteridge says: “Whilst some chemicals themselves may not be too dangerous they can react violently if mixed or wrongly used. Years ago I saw a young washman change a drum of chlorine bleach. Wanting not to be wasteful he then picked up the old drum and emptied the few drops left into the new drum. Unfortunately he had mixed up a drum of bleach with a drum of sour. The reaction was so violent that chemicals sprayed into his face nearly blinding him and badly burning his face.”

Mr Betteridge concluded: “Ignorance of these potential dangers is no excuse and we are always happy to help out with a short talk to personnel on the risks involved so that they think of their own and others’ safety.”

Laundries also lean on their chemicals’ suppliers for advice on all areas of health and safety, HACCP controls (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, pronounced hassip), conformity to new standards, effluent values and so on. Christeyn’s Mr Betteridge is a member of ISO and EN standards workgroups that are drawing up new standards for the laundry industry.

He says: “Our ‘sales’ force is predominantly technical and we are in a position to offer this advice either by phone or, preferably, on site where the problems can be seen at first hand.”

When it comes to assessing a new chemical there are a number of important parameters to take into account. The wash quality, says Charlie Betteridge, must take priority. If linen is not coming out clean, other factors are irrelevant.

“Price is always one reason people look at alternatives, but should not be the deciding factor,” says Mr Betteridge. Because the opportunities to negotiate on the cost of personnel, water or fuel are limited, laundry managers often look to save money elsewhere. But, Mr Betteridge warns, it’s not the price per sack or drum of detergent that’s important, it’s the cost of the wash. “The cost of detergent per kilo washed is the important figure, although even here it is worth looking at other factors,” he says.

For example, if a product can be used at a lower temperature or requires less auxiliary additives, the total cost of the wash process may be lower, even if the chemical product itself is marginally more expensive.

While he accepts that, for many laundry managers, unit cost may be the main driver for change, Colin Stubbs says it is just as important, if not more so, to balance the total “in-use costs” – water, energy, labour and so on. He recommends a 25-wash test piece (DiverseyLever uses Krefeld Institute) for giving a good indication of extended result criteria, and warns not to ignore fabric damage.

Mr Stubbs says: “Two per cent of total laundry spend is on chemicals, and around 20% on textiles. Some products can give good results but damage fabric, and this means significant cost increase to a business. If I owned or ran a laundry this would always be my number one consideration for change. Better to pay 4% on detergent and reduce textile cost to 15% of total, if possible.”

Environmental cost

Another trend being seen is a much greater interest in environmental factors. Bill Conley says: “People are interested in the environment, but want a cost benefit.” He points out that chemistry accounts for about 2% to 3% of the total cost of a laundry, whereas water and energy can be 12%. For this reason alone, it makes sense to look at environmental factors.

However, in Charlie Betteridge’s view, technical service is the most important factor. He says: “Any product is only worth buying if it is used properly, and our technicians will always conduct a ‘before and after’ audit when running a trial.

“Quite often the washing machine is not set up to work optimally and, by showing this to the customer, he can see not just how the new washing process differs, but why. Things often go wrong slowly and through regular service visits we can see problems coming and change things before the problem gets too big.”

Henkel-Ecolab feels so strongly about technical service that it has increased numbers in the field in the last 12 months, from 150 to 230. “It’s important that we have people who are locally available,” says Mr Conley.

Robert Cole agrees with providing as much information as possible: “We would generally advise a three-month trial, as this gives [laundry managers] a better understanding of the chemicals, but more importantly covers the whole range of staining… They would then have full results on the quality of cleaning, whiteness and brightness given by our products.”

Bill Conley says that laundries no longer look at individual products. Generally, they choose a single supplier, capable of offering a complete solution. “It’s an integrated approach,” he says, “covering on the one hand chemistry, and on the other hand dosage equipment.”

Paul Andrews, marketing manager with automated dispensing products and systems company Chemical Controls, believes he can provide OPLs and commercial laundries with a product they need. He says: “Laundry managers are increasingly interested in having information on the performance and efficiency of their laundry operation. In an increasingly competitive market, controlling costs is an obvious priority.” He added: “Our Doseminder already provides the laundry operator with information to satisfy this requirement. We will soon be launching our next generation of laundry chemical dispensing equipment, which will provide more information in an easy-to-use format.”

Raw materials’ prices

Potentially one of the biggest problems facing chemicals’ users is the price of raw materials. Charlie Betteridge has witnessed a rapid rise in the price Christeyns pays. Phosphate and metasilicate, for example, have gone up by between 10% and 20% in a comparatively short period.

Bill Conley of Henkel-Ecolab says prices of raw materials have, in many cases, more than doubled in the last 18 months. Problem areas are alkaline-based products, caustic, oil-based products and those priced in US dollars. It is likely, Mr Conley says, that there will be a 4% to 6% increase passed on to laundry customers in the next year.

Mr Betteridge says: “After relative stability in the past few years with only moderate increases, we are suddenly being faced with explosive price rises… It is obviously difficult to pass these on to an industry already suffering under price pressure from the other end. The difficulty is knowing whether these increases are going to level off or continue. Either way, pressure is there and increases cannot be avoided, although we are aware that we will have to absorb a great deal of the costs ourselves.”
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