Production methods in large textile care plants continue to improve at a rapid pace, thanks to equipment innovation plus further computerisation and automation.
Work handling specialist Spiral Ventures (UK) Ltd, of Banbury, Oxfordshire, is a supplier company highly in tune with the developments.
Mr Wilfred Osula, managing director, says two-thirds of the company’s business is in the textile care area, and underlines its commitment to, and very extensive knowledge of, the sector.
“Our focus on the textile care industry gives us a specialised and detailed knowledge that enables us to respond to the varied requirements of our customers,” Mr Osula says.
“We are able to offer our customers the specialised care which we believe they deserve.
“Spiral Ventures is able to maintain its competitive advantage by providing innovative handling solutions to meet our customers’ needs and by placing a very high premium on the provision of quality service and after-sales care.”
Mr Osula points out that Spiral Ventures has a particularly notable capability for undertaking larger, more complicated work handling projects. It is able to utilise the support and expertise of Vanriet, the company—based in the Netherlands—which has over 50 years of experience in the provision of materials handling solutions.
Spiral Ventures was established four years ago to exclusively sell and market Vanriet systems in the UK, particularly in the laundry sector, and this is continued. Spiral Ventures also supplies materials handling systems to the UK parcels industry and to textile care markets abroad—most notably in the US. Its equipment is manufactured at Vanriet facilities in the UK and in the Netherlands.
According to Mr Osula, challenges presented by increasing automation in the textile care industry are positive ones.
“We must maintain a particular vigilance with regard to developments in automation,” he says. “Essentially, the challenge is for Spiral Ventures to remain technically competent which entails an ongoing investment in research and development.
“We believe that the next major area of demand will specifically concern the high-speed sorting and processing of linen and mats, perhaps using RF chips and transponders.”
Currently, the increasing use of computers and PLC controllers in the laundry marketplace is significantly contributing to Spiral Ventures’ greater liaison with other equipment manufacturers in the area of technology integration.
“A handshake signal from either our equipment, or other equipment, is usually all that is required to provide a fully integrated system,” Mr Osula comments.
He notes that, as laundry work batches become larger, the problem of separating individual items—for sorting, classification, processing, transportation and storage—is more salient. The batches need to be broken down into as manageable sizes as possible to reduce work tangling; to enable individual items to be identified; to improve workflow in the laundry; and, above all, to enable pieces to be tracked, reducing inventory losses.
Spiral Ventures considers itself to be a “solutions provider” in the work handling field. The first step of a project involves a survey of the customer’s site, plus the gathering of information on particular needs and problems. A comprehensive project appraisal is conducted with participation by logistics, systems and design engineers working closely with the customer.
Then appointed is a project manager who is responsible for day-to-day implementation—preparation of final designs, manufacturing of the systems, and the installation and commissioning of these.
Following commissioning, there is regular liasion with the customer to ensure the work handling solutions are providing the right performance. Any necessary fine-tuning of a system is arranged.
Mr Osula stresses the importance of system reliability: “A very high premium is placed on performance and minimum downtime of laundry production, leaving our customers to concentrate on their core businesses of delivering their products and service with the minimum delay.”
The hard use of Spiral Ventures’ products in laundries invariably means a potentially accelerated depreciation over time. However, the company’s systems, which command a premium price because of their quality, are durable and provide an attractive return on investment.
Spiral Ventures has installations in over 70% of laundry plants in the UK, Mr Osula says. Customers include Sunlight, Initial Rentokil, Johnson, Midland, Combined Linen Services, Clean Linen Services, Eastern Counties Laundries, Winchester Laundry, Royal Bournemouth, Stalbridge Linen, Greenvale Linen, and Fishers. The Disney textile care plant in Orlando, Florida, is a notable US customer.
Other laundry equipment suppliers worked with include Broadbent Laundry Systems, Ducker UK, Electrolux and Cherry Tree.
| Systems are solutions |
| Spiral Ventures develops and provides systems as solutions to material handling problems-the accent is on workflow efficiency and equipment reliability. The company offers: * General materials handling equipment such as various belt and roller conveyors. * A range of Autowrap packaging machinery and l-sealers complete with integrated conveyor automation and PLC control system. * Live storage and racking systems. * Linen sorting, bag loading and transportation systems. * Batch loading systems for tunnel washers. |
| Spiral of success |
| Mr Wilfred Osula, managing director of Spiral Ventures, has about 25 years of experience in the textile care sector. Prior to the establishing of Spiral Ventures three years ago, he was a project manager with Vanriet. Why was the Spiral Ventures name chosen? Mr Osula says "spiral" alluded to a positive and upward spiral of success for the company's customers as well as for itself, and "ventures" related to-at the time the company was launched-the level of risk and uncertainty associated with what it was setting out to achieve with materials handling systems. |
