New generation, new growth

For everybody, 2020 was a nightmare year but behind the scenes Kannegiesser was restructuring and fine-honing its offering to the market, while supporting its customers through the pandemic. Now it is time to introduce the industrial textile care market to the new Kannegiesser generation.

Tina Kannegiesser, the third generation of the company, which has now been formed into a Trust, will be in charge of the closer management of the GmbH and will be supported by three CEOs – Engelbert Heinz, Otto Burger and Thomas Doppmeier. This triumvirate forms the executive committee of Kannegiesser, which will be organised collectively. Each member will contribute from his or her own specialist area.

Strategies and failsafes

Tina Kannegiesser vision is to strengthen the position of the company in order to support the industry it serves. The pandemic has shown the absolute importance of hygiene and achieving top results via professional textile care. Kannegiesser is committed to supporting laundries all over the world with technical solutions to cope with the challenges of the year to come. These changes were being set in place as the world was in combat with Covid-19 and, like many other businesses, Kannegiesser spent the best part of 2020 devising strategies, systems and failsafes to ensure its customers around the world were supported through this tough time.

“Kannegiesser, throughout the first and second waves of the pandemic continued to engage with existing and potential customers, everyhwhere and going forward the topic of further development plays an important role for us. And that in the three dimensions of employees, products and customer communication. Our employees must inevitably adapt to the new situation, and this primarily means changes in the working environment and culture. We have always developed products, but now more than ever.

“The ways in which we stay in contact with our customers are also new. It was a big change for us and our customers to no longer meet in person, but to switch to digital communication channels - not to mention trade fairs and congresses. Especially now, we want to signal that no one is left alone and that we can defy this crisis together,” says Tina Kannegiesser.

“Through video conferences and webinars, we were able to share a wide variety of content quickly and give ourselves the opportunity to collaborate and act internationally. Those who were unable to attend were given the opportunity to read or even listen to the content on various digital communication channels. With newsletters, posts on social media channels and our website, we have so far informed you about campaigns such as hygiene, availability and productivity. After all, topics like these are more important than ever - for us and especially for our customers.”

Hygiene foremost

Tina Kannegiesser explains that global business developments showed even before the pandemic that the main future tasks of textile service providers will be in the area of hygiene. Especially now, she says, the topic of hygiene is gaining importance in the public eye - no matter whether it is a hospital or the hotel industry. “Therefore, it is all the more important that our customers and also we consider the issue of hygiene carefully. We have already reacted actively to this trend in the past and also now and have brought the topic of hygiene into focus. For example, we have used the hygiene trend as a hook for a marketing campaign. After all, a central part of the laundry service is to meet high hygiene standards.”

This industry does great work: laundries and textile service companies provide clean linen and clothing to millions of hospital beds, doctors and caregivers as well as nursing home residents worldwide every day. As the Covid-19 pandemic progresses, it is becoming clear that the requirements for hygienic reprocessing of textiles will not be limited to the healthcare sector in the future, but will encompass many other industries. Hotels, restaurants and airlines need hygienically clean linen just as much as wearers of workwear and personal protective equipment.

“What does this mean for our textile service providers?” asks Tina Kannegiesser. “It is clear that washing alone is not enough. Textiles are delivered dirty and possibly contaminated and should leave the company as a clean and hygienically impeccable product. In addition to the people who give their best every day, the most important thing here is a proper washing process, the right machine technology and the logistical processes. Kannegiesser is there to support the laundries as a partner in laundry technology.”

Technology advance

In terms of that technology, she says, for example, there are many details that make the PowerTrans Vario tunnel washer a “partner for hygiene professionals”.

Consistently upright baths ensure that the laundry is processed under exactly the required disinfection conditions - safely, reproducibly and matched to the batch size, the type of laundry and the degree of soiling. Mixing of liquors between adjacent washing chambers is reliably avoided.

Meanwhile, Kannegiesser washer extractors feature unique measuring and sensor technology to ensure washing and disinfection quality. With ActiveProcessControl, they are the only washing machines in the world that know exactly how much laundry and water is in the drum at any given time. No other machine knows the exact amount of wash liquor remaining in the drum after a bath drain. Consequently, no other machine can determine how much liquor must be replenished after a bath drain in order to maintain the specified disinfection conditions.

When it comes to 100 % process reliability, there is no way around Kannegiesser washer extractor technology with ActiveProcessControl, says Tina Kannegiesser.

Positive thinking

“We saw the crisis not only as a challenge but also as an opportunity. So we were also able to take something positive from the crisis. We were also able to focus on the further development and new development of products. We already have exciting new products in the pipeline that we are working on at full speed.

“Of course, we don’t want to reveal too much, but our new development opens up completely new possibilities for our customers. For many years, automated production processes were unthinkable in laundries. But now the time has come: robotisation can start.

“This first step towards robotisation is a decisive building block for future security - for our customers and for us. It is part of our consistent orientation as a partner to textile service companies. We are thus making an important contribution to the further development of our industry. An industry that stands for the responsible use of resources and for hygiene.

“But first, we hope that our clients and partners will come through the crisis in the same way and that we will emerge stronger together,” Tina Kannegiesser concludes.