There are periodic worldwide shortages of cotton and after every year featuring a poor cotton crop, prices rocket and the rental sector suffers, along with many others. Injection of new textiles into circulating pool stocks continues to play a major role in the cost of delivering a competitive rental service.
The answer to the question: “Can’t something be done about this?” is: “Yes, it certainly can!” and this month we look at how to set about it. The prize for success is frequently a reduction of some 30% in the annual cost of textile purchases. If the problem is constantly put into the ‘too difficult, can’t be bothered’ pile on your desk then a valuable opportunity is being wasted.
The target for the average life of a rental textile is often taken as a very achievable 200 wash and use cycles to failure or disappearance, but most rental operators rarely get above 120 cycles for a single duvet cover, falling to 90 cycles for a king duvet and 60 for a table napkin. In stark contrast to this sorry tale, a few laundries manage to achieve near to 300 cycles for both bedding and towels, by dedicated steps to control preventable degradation in the laundry and very strong management on the laundry floor. One textile supplier reported results of a trial with white, 100% polyester table napkins which achieved just over 600 cycles, but this was on a cruise liner. The most outstanding trial in which LTC was involved was led by a focused and dedicated healthcare launderer, who took their textile life for single sheets from 120 to 175 cycles. This took around 18 months (with some time spent in hospital mortuaries), but the financial results more than paid for the effort!
The first step you should be taking now is to estimate accurately the average life of each item in your own circulating stocks. The tried and trusted method is based on the excellent cost-and-management accountant’s technique, which needs no stocktake and can be set up to run automatically every month. You take the total number of rental issues over a rolling three-, six- or 12 month period and divide this by the number of new items you have had to inject in that period to maintain the service.
For example: if you issue 1,435,200 double duvets over the past six months and you have to inject 13,932 new double duvets to keep up with demand, then the average life of one of your double duvets is 1,435,000 ÷ 13,932 = 103 wash and use cycles. This is fairly typical, although not very good. Single duvets might survive slightly longer, whereas king duvets might only manage 90 cycles. Canny operators will run this check every month or so. To do this you need to bring you textile purchases onto the same spreadsheet as your rental issues so that a tiny bit of extra programming gives you the latest average figure for your textile life automatically every week or month or quarter.
Textile life varies considerably across the sector, which suggest that some are much better at optimising this than others. So, how do they do it? There are a few critical steps you can take:
Fibre content is critical; 100% cotton is more susceptible to chemical damage in the wash. Cotton-rich is generally less likely to lose its strength progressively in multiple launderings and it retains much of the breathability and texture of pure cotton. The high-volume rental market has standardised on 70% cotton, 30% polyester, which has enjoyed outstanding success.
De-sizing of the loom-state grey cotton cloth is absolutely critical. The sizing applied to the warp threads by the weaver enables maximum shuttle speeds to minimise weaving cost, but this must be completely removed by the cloth finisher prior to heat setting in the final stenter. Otherwise. the cloth exhibits ‘cracked-ice creasing’ which cannot be smoothed out on the ironer by the launderer. The weaver’s sizing is supposed to be removed anyway by the cloth finisher and the cost is tiny, provided it is done before the final stenter. You can check that de-sizing is complete by putting one droplet of clean water onto an item from a new delivery and checking the time for the droplet to be absorbed into the fabric. Less than 3 seconds and there should be no problems with unremovable creasing. For some fabrics, the check is better done after the first wash. For the launderer to remove a set-on sizing, it needs a strong chemical treatment, with extra cost and associated loss of longevity.
Holes, tears and frays are the inevitable consequence of progressive weakening in multiple washing. Misuse of sodium hypochlorite (chlorine bleach) continues to be the major culprit. This can be avoided by good management of dosage, but time, concentration and temperature are equally important. Cotton-rich is less likely to be affected by incorrect bleaching, because the polyester fibres are much more resistant to damage and it these which give cottonrich its long-term durable strength. The new fabric should have an initial tenacity of over 400N per 50mm strip to give maximum life.
Iron in your raw water can be a major problem, especially when it affects a large area, such as the chalky downs of southern England. Traces of dissolved iron catalyse (accelerate) the chemical reaction between chlorine bleach and cotton, causing rotting of the cotton component and progressive weakening. Once the cotton has been rotted away, the strengthening effect of the polyester is still reduced a little and textile life is still shortened. It really does pay to install an iron removal unit (which operates in the same way as a water softener) to prevent this. The critical level of iron in laundry water is only 0.1 parts per million, above which the rot sets in.
Spa oils on towels and any spa sheeting products must be thoroughly removed in order to maximise the life of spa textiles. This can only be done with the right emulsifier geared to the removal of spa oils, which often have a very low HLB (hydrophilic-lipophilic balance) value. If you get a fragrant odour on removal of spa towels from the dryer (or, even worse, a rancid odour of degraded oils) then you are going to get a much-reduced life from these items – you’ll lose typically 50% of the expected life. This is because degraded oils tend to be acidic, which also rots cotton quickly. Obtaining the right emulsifier is critical and will usually solve the problem.
Greying of sheeting continues to drive early ragging of otherwise strong and usable stock. For sheets and pillowcases this is easily rectified by the use of a premium detergent with good suspending properties. Greying is caused in washing by re-deposition of soiling from the wash liquor onto the clean fabric in the later stages of the wash. A good suspending agent will wrap around the micelles of removed soiling and any particles, and prevent re-deposition, by neutralising the electrochemical charge on the fabric and by physically preventing the removed soiling from touching the cloth.
Greying of towels is much more of a problem, which frequently leads to premature removal of grubby looking stock. Hotels do not like grey towels spoiling the otherwise pristine appearance of young white towels in the five-star bathroom. Early greying of towels in the second and third years of their lives is usually caused by over-drying. As soon as the tips of the terry loops are bone dry, they start to acquire a tiny static electrical charge and if the tumbler cycle continues this will attract every dirt particle from the drying air stream, causing progressive long-term greying. The secret to avoiding this is to fit the tumbler with automatic cycle terminators, which use infra-red detection to stop the dryer when a certain moisture content is reached. Finishing the dry when there is only 2 – 3% moisture left in the towels usually works well, provided the sensors are kept absolutely clean by dedicated maintenance. Automatic cycle terminators will usually pay for themselves in reduced energy consumption within twelve months. Improved whiteness is a bonus!
Cheap bargain offers of batches of new towels or sheets can be attractive but beware the accidental use by the cloth finisher of the wrong optical brightening agents (OBAs). There have been many instances of a conflict of OBAs when the bargain batch is washed, because the cheap brightener can react with the OBA in the laundry detergent to turn the entire batch a delicate shade of pale yellow, blue or pink. The fault looks worse in some lights than others, so the customer is often the first to see it.
Conclusion
It is always tempting to blame abuse by the customer for short textile life and the early and expensive disappearance of your textile investment. This month we have concentrated on the things which you can do in-house to address unnecessary losses. In a future issue we shall be looking at how to identify and prove customer abuse, which can be just as important in maximising the life of one of your most valuable assets.
