October 2009 LCT 11

Profile

How a near 100 year-oldformer family laundrybusiness is

transforming itself in thepursuit of businessopportunities. Irving Scottreports

As a business the WaveneyLaundry, then based inBallymena Northern Ireland,commenced commercialoperations in 1911. Back then,the focus of the company’sactivity was on securing workin the traditional Ulster textileactivity of hemming linenarticles and, in particular,hemming handkerchiefs madeby local linen and lawn textileweavers. The move to domesticlaundry processing soonfollowed and the businesscontinued through the difficultyears of the two World Warsand the depressing frequency ofeconomic recessions whichcontinually, or so it seems,affect the business life of thenation.

However, the continuedpressures of operating a laundryservice with a fair mixture ofobsolescent machinery fromwhat might be loosely describedas ‘unsuitable’ premises reacheda climax in 2006 when theowners finalised discussionswith one of their long standingmat processing clients andagreed a sale of the business toRobinson Service.

Robinson Service itself wasa well established businesssupport services company,operating in building premisessecurity, washroom and hygieneservices provision, commercialoffice and building cleaning, aswell as in floor protection andmat rental services. All theseseparate divisions deliverservice to their customers notonly in Ulster but also inIreland, Scotland and severalparts of England.

For a second generationfamily business RobinsonService had seen excellentgrowth in customers, as well asin revenue, and the acquisitionof Waveney Laundry madesound business sense as anatural service extension for theRobinson Service Group. It alsogave Robinson completevertical control of its matlaundering service which bynow had grown to servicing3,500 mats per week washingthe dust mats which RobinsonService had previously sub-contracted to Waveney.

Operations for the newsubsidiary company inBallymena had by 2008 becomeseverely constrained by theshape size and capacity of theBallymena premises and afteracquiring a new plant formerlyoccupied by a food servicecompany in Rathenraw, some10 miles south of Ballymena,near Antrim, Robinson ServiceLaundry Division, was movedto the new premises over aperiod of six strenuous weeks inApril/May 2009.

Work needed to convert thebuilding included theinstallation of the largest steel-fabricated water tank everdelivered in modern times inNorthern Ireland. The tank,supplied by Arcon Engineering

in Ahogill N.I. was delivered tosite at night, to minimise trafficdisruption and is sized at 15min length, 4m in width and 3min depth to hold 43,000 gallonsand weighing over 200 tonneswhen at capacity. This wasneeded as back-up to the sitewater requirements which aredelivered from two artesianbores on the site and the tank isthe reservoir supply buffer forthe laundry.

The conversion of the27,000 square foot building forlaundry production and theparallel installation of newproduction machinery as well asthe relocation of the existingmachinery represents aninvestment by Robinson Serviceof over £2 million. Workincluded rewiring of the factory,

installing security fencing androller shutter doors to the goodsinwards and outward area, newlighting, new fire alarms and anew natural gas energy supplysystem, as well as waterrecycling and heat recoverysystems to conserve and reducewaste energy and generatedheat. As we visited the plantagreements were concluded toinstall a flue gas economisersystem from KemcoEngineering whose local base islocated very close to theRathenraw plant in CountyAntrim.

In the laundry itself worknow proceeds with understatedcalm, carried out by a team of45 professionals, all of whomtransferred with the companywhen it moved from Ballymenato Rathenraw. Still trading asWaveney while the relocationand take over is fully absorbed,Robinson Service, LaundryDivision is now one of the mostefficient and productive plantsin Ireland. With the installationof new and sophisticatedprocessing machinery fromKannegiesser to improve theoutput, as well as the quality, involume from the mat washingsection and the ironer line,Robinson Service LaundryDivision can face a future witha capacity for increased workvolumes combined withimproved energy cost savingscoupled with enhanced speed ofoutput in production.

Moving the plant ten milesgave the impetus for theRobinson Service teammanaging the laundry thechance to invest in the latesttechnologies and in order toachieve this exhaustive studiesand visits were made to TexcareFrankfurt in June 2008 and tothe Kannegiesser series of OpenHouse Exhibitions in Germany.

As a result, an order was placedfor the latest innovativePowerSwing, open pocketwasher-extractor with the newrotaload system for automaticloading and unloadingintegrated with a KannegiesserPowerDry gas heated 175kgcapacity drier operated in theRathenraw plant. ThePowerSwing was primarilyinstalled for processing dustmats with batch loads up to400kg, but at the time of ourplant visit this huge machinewas turning around 300kg oflinen ready for ironing. A clever

system to divide the washedload before drying wasachieved using the inclinedconveyor connected betweenthe PowerSwing and PowerDry.

The ironer line is where thesteam age really does meet theefficiency and energyproductivity age, as the recentlyinstalled Kannegiesser modelEMT three-station feeder,Kannegiesser two-roll HPMheating band technology andKannegiesser reverse belt RFMfolder- ironer system clearlyillustrates. Well balancedquality and high productivitydrying is required whenprocessing between 65,000 and75,000 mixed pieces of flatworkeach week. Not only is the highproduction of the Kannegiesserironer remarkable, but themachine – having been re-installed from the Ballymenaplant is installed across the aislefrom a forty or fifty year-oldManlove Alliott, three-rollcalender. Still working whenrequired, this machine providesgood evidence of the buildquality of Manlove Alliottmachinery, as this particularmachine has already seenservice in three laundries inUlster over the past halfcentury.

This entire Robinson ServiceLaundry Division success storyis, in the final analysis, down tothe quality of the staff andmanagement in this dynamicgroup of companies. LorraineSmyth, the Laundry Divisiongeneral manager, has been withWaveney Laundry since leavingschool some 22 years ago and isan exemplary laundry managerwho visibly relishes her workand the challenges of laundrylife. There have to be morereasons than mere money toaccount for the loyalty of the 45staff members at the Robinson

Laundry plant and LorraineSmyth has made it a personalcareer choice to succeed in themanagement of laundries. Tothis end, from the very start atWaveney, she has taken everyopportunity on offer to undergospecific training courses as wellas plant visits, in order to add toand improve her ownprofessionalism in laundryoperations as a craft andprofession.

Good managers are goodwith people and their excellenceresults in a team which is happyand willing to follow theirexample in the workplace.These qualities are wellillustrated in the LaundryDivision of Robinson Serviceand that in no small way derivesfrom the nature of this verysolid family business, foundedin 1968 and now into thesecond generation of control,exercised by David Robinson,son of founding personalitiesJames and Sarah JaneRobinson. Robinson Service inall its divisions now directlyemploys over 1200 people.

David Robinson has come tolaundry processing directionand management only recentlysince acquiring WaveneyLaundry in 2006. That shortperiod has seen him attack thelaundry learning curve with arelish and with profoundlyenergising results for the oldWaveney as well as for the newRobinson Laundry Division.

In conversation with us itbecame very clear, very quickly,that high speed evaluation of asituation, matched to laser sharpanalysis of the issues and thenprompt and decisive actiontaken to execute changes toeither systems or methods totake the Robinson Groupforward, are the visible andattractive qualities of thisdynamic Ulsterman. Takingmajor decisions at such an earlystage of ownership, to takeWaveney Laundry from ‘SteamAge’ to ‘Energy Efficient Age’was an expression ofconfidence in the technologieswhich Robinson invested inand, equally importantly, theseradical decisions were fullysupported and efficientlyimplemented, by the laundrystaff.

A breath of fresh air inlaundry operations is here inRathenraw, where commonsense and a rejection of secondbest, are the guiding principlesof the Robinson Servicebusinesses. It must be verycomforting as a director orowner of a Robinson Servicecustomer to know that yourbusiness is given essentialbusiness services support byany part of the RobinsonService organisation.

David Robinson, MD of Robinson Service Group in Ulster at thenewest division in his group, Robinson's Laundry Division

Engineer at Robinsons for over 20 years, Carson McPherson,stands proudly in front of the Manlove-Alliott three-rollcalender behind which is the new Kannegiesser two-roll HPMironer which does all the output from the plant withoutneeding a great deal of production assistance from the 50-year-old original

Lorraine Smyth, general manager Robinson Service LaundryDivision is pictured in front of one of her prized pieces ofKannegiesser machinery, the new gas-fired ironer recentlyinstalled at the Rathenraw Plant N I

From ‘steam age’to ‘low energy age’

in a few shortmoves

“ ”The ironer line is where the steam agereally does meet the efficiency andenergy productivity age...