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July/August 2008 LCT 19 18 LCT July/August 2008 Texcare 2008 Texcare 2008 F rankfurt in early June 2008, hosted a record setting Texcare Show which broke most, if not all, relevant records: most exhibitors, most visitors, the most attractive booths we have seen anywhere around the world and most appropriately, most business written or to be quoted for by the exhibitors. The last point is important as there is considerable cost involved to exhibitors in mounting an exhibition booth at a venue such as Frankfurt. Just one example will illustrate this elemental fact; the Kannegiesser booth extended to 1800 square metres and was staffed all day, every day by 130 Kannegiesser personnel, all of whom had to be transported daily from a suburban hotel, as well as being fed and watered. A capital cost for the duration of Texcare, which probably equates to a sum considerably in excess of the annual turnover of many of the other exhibitors at the show. Mere facts and figures only give a clinical overview of the reality of this particular Texcare event. In the opinion of this observer it was the best presented show which we have seen and outstripped the Clean Show for the excellence of the booth designs and presentation of corporate style. The hall was, except on the Monday, not too hot and the throngs of visitors every day, made it almost impossible to keep to any pre-determined appointment schedule for interviews and discussions. There was much to see around the Hall; however the chief disappointment to all interested drycleaning visitors was the marked lack of presence of the FMB Group (Bassi) which did not attend Texcare as a corporate policy, apparently because Union does not sell well in Germany! Certainly this is probably a realistic ‘commercial’ reason, but to fail to show the flag in a Fair such as this is to our mind an unthinkable proposition, especially as the weight of non- German visitors reached record heights. Both Firbimatic and Realstar were on display courtesy of some of their distributor associates, but the real damage was the Group’s attitude to the market generally and the effect on potential drycleaning visitors to review their options must have been poor. One direct result was the attention being paid to both Renzacci and Böwe where their large booths were very busy nearly all the time. Renzacci were even displaying GreenEarth® ‘approved’ stickers on their machines so even that ‘temple’ has fallen to the new wave of solvents. Continuing with drycleaning, the focus of much central European attention was on the very well attended booth operated by Seitz Chemicals. Here the magnet was the GreenEarth® licence recently awarded to Seitz to create a market in Germany and Austria for this now very strongly supported solvent. GreenEarth is probably the only solvent in the world to be directly supported by a political party; certainly it is the only solvent in the Seitz distribution portfolio which the Green Party actively supports; a fact which Alexander Seitz successfully markets to his advantage. Seitz has released very effective new brochures which describe how the cleaner can achieve credible economies and help restrict their potential environmental damage, by successfully using Seitz chemicals in wet washing and drycleaning. Hydronomics deals with the effects of saving with and by the wash water in use. The Luxor brochure explains the new Seitz chemicals for traditional Perc and HCS cleaners using the recently developed Luxor range of Preclin detergents to take the existing offer to new heights of economy and efficiency. Luxor will be available in September and Hydronomics in November 2008. Almost everything around the Hall was presented with a definite Green tinge. Many products whatever their ultimate purpose tried to become green or at least project a green image. How many actually achieve that ideal is difficult to say. However, the chemicals supply side was definitely into Green in a major way with Christeyns promoting Steamless Laundry and Ecolab boasting several Green initiatives including an ingenious water heating system which has been adopted for certain models of Senking continuous tunnel washers. This system was developed by Wientjens in Holland and is a further example of a small specialist engineer who understands the technology and the industry and who is constantly applying engineered benefits to change the thinking about what were formerly ‘standard’ techniques. The Wientjens system is patented and provides hot process water at 99.7 per cent efficiency to the CTW. The system is exclusive to Ecolab and Jensen and the Wientjens expertise is available through them to all their markets in the world. Perhaps we may be allowed a small recollection of history here for the first Steam Free laundry in Europe was reported on almost exactly two years ago in Laundry & Cleaning Today and this concerned the replacement of boiler heating at a laundry in the west of Ireland (Alan O’Connor at Claremorris) and the application of Direct Contact Water heating to the 18 stageVoss CTW, as well as to five tumblers and two ironer lines. The system had been seen prior to installation at the Texcare Show in 2004 and was installed to great effect by Walton Dunlop of Dunlop Design and manufactured by Kemco Systems in Florida. So it is personally very gratifying to see that ideas born of a truly international supply chain and first reported in this newspaper have now been given the approval of such corporate behemoths as Ecolab and Jensen. Christeyns continues its advance to becoming a formidable market force with the announcement at the Messe that they had concluded negotiations 1200 pieces per hour productivity, using one or two lanes, the TOTO spreader/folder has vacuum feed and a continuously revolving spreader belt, which together, ensure that the textile pieces presented by the four operators are never creased or skewed at the start of the process. This machine is a powerful demonstration of the genius of the Japanese to think outside existing parameters and we feel sure that Lapauw and its many distributors will achieve a significant level of success with this exciting piece of engineering. On to RFID control systems which are without doubt becoming the most essential pieces in the chain of command in today’s modern laundry. It is wonderful to have four or five tunnel washers and a battery of ironer lines feeding an overhead storage monorail sortation system all whirring and whizzing away for 10 hours per day non stop. The reality is that if you don’t know where each different batch has gone and where the next route delivery is filling from, then the task becomes a laundryman’s nightmare. Without transparent and accurate control of all phases of the process then any investment is merely an expense and the benefits are, at best, partial and illusory. We recall talking at length with the people from Datamars at the 2000 Texcare show and agreeing with them that they had a rather large missionary job to do to convince launderers the world over that the future lay in micro- chip control, tracking and recognition systems. Eight years on and the Datamars story takes another leap forward with the announcement of their commercial link with ABS software systems to form a systems delivery company which can meet almost any challenge thrown at it. In any discussion about RFID and its relevance to your plant, Datamars will be on the investigate and report list of most businesses investigating RFID. We also think that the TAGSYS RFID system sold and serviced by Polymark as part of their very long association with this market-leading RFID- e- connecting business, utilising sophisticated software and transponders. Claimed to have more years experience in high frequency transponders than their competitors, coupled with guarantees of reliable performance under the most rugged laundry conditions (up to 222 °C through an ironer and withstanding up to 37 Bar pressure, for more than 200 cycles) the TAGSYS Irving Scott reports to acquire the issued shares in LCE Odry. LCE is a Czech company with a team of highly skilled laundry chemists and their acquisition gives Christeyns a definite step up in their expansion plans in Eastern Europe. Christeyns has been growing at an average of 20 per cent over the past 15 years to reach a turnover of €124 million. This is a very creditable performance by the team led by Alain Bostoen and Charlie Betteridge in Belgium and Germany, with Peter O’Connor heading up the very successful UK business in Bradford. One extremely positive new development which should interest all drycleaners were the TEX60 and TEX15 high performance finishing cabinets, which are new to the market having been developed by a small German engineering firm based in Haan and owned by Heiker and Willi Brüsce. Willi Brüsce has been involved with drycleaning machinery for more than 25 years and this range of cabinet finishers is different, highly effective in production volumes and simple in construction. There are very few of the bits and bobs of apparently extraneous pieces of tubing and connectors found on traditional cabinet finishers and indeed the whole system gives the impression of serious ability to perform the tasks allotted to the machines in the range. We were informed that this series of finishers will be available in the UK when distributor arrangements have been finalised and from the reviews which we have seen, given by German drycleaners, of the volumes achieved in use there seems to be no doubt that high performance and economies of labour will be achieved. Onwards to the multiplicity of laundry exhibitors, where, tucked away on an outer wall we found a small booth demonstrating a patented British invention which detects, stains, holes and tears in most laundry flatwork such as those occurring in sheets, duvet covers, tablecloths and napkins. Each piece is scanned on approaching the folding station, by a series of high resolution cameras fixed above the conveyor approach. UV lamps combined with fluorescent lights are placed above the inspection area. As the pieces advance under the cameras the defects are detected and screened out of the queue. Designed and patented by Dr Firoux Pauya, an Iranian, resident in Bath, England, the MIC Linen Scanner is built in England and now distributed worldwide by HeBeTeC Waschereitechnik GmbH. A German company led by Ralf Schroeder and his business partner; this scanner is surely the answer to the quality conscious laundryman’s prayers? Next, to a booth with a distinctive Japanese atmosphere and a most enthralling spreading- feeder designed and built by TOTO Folder Manufacturing Company and exclusively distributed in Europe by the Lapauw Company in Belgium. This machine is an impressive piece of innovative mechanical and electrical engineering – possibly, even, a masterpiece of design engineering. Rated at The only way to travel without delay… TAGSYS RFID towering above them all on a mighty CHIP The Kleen-Tex shark swims in deep waters TOP MARKS FOR ONE OF THE BEST SHOWS EVER Heiker Bruske: Happy with her firm’s success at Texcare ABOVE: Now where’s the TSA manual on jams in CBWs? RIGHT: Alexander Seitz ABOVE: Jim Pellerin and Karl Schubert are presented with photos of themselves from 1978 by Ian Elliott of Polymark who received the Milnor agency in that year TOP RIGHT: Firoux Pauya and Ralf Shroeder (l&r facing) discuss the mic scanner with visitors to their booth RIGHT: Steam free laundries are everywhere – Christeyns certainly think so transponders deliver almost 100 per cent accurate readings from a variety of installed, reader- stations, according to type of job. Already more than 60 TAGSYS tunnel readers are installed worldwide and there are several hundred installations globally dealing with every laundry item from dust mats through to napery and sheets. TAGSYS seems to us to be a worthy competitor for any possible RFID task required, especially as the Polymark team, as a complete business unit, combines hugely successful international talents from Provence, New England and Banbury. In most business situations performance is built on demonstrable competence and experience, the Polymark - TAGSYS team seems to us to be the team to follow for the Championship of the RFID arena. In another fiercely competitive area the competition to achieve market acceptance in the fields of energy efficiency, economy in water and effluent purification and water recycling, was in full spate. Principal contenders in these fields include, among others; Broadbent Laundry Water Recycling Systems and the newly formed, Kemco International business. Broadbent utilise a system which drives the water to be purified at pressure through a series of ceramic rods, through which the impurities are separated out and the cleaned water returned for re-use in the process with a consequent saving in energy cost and water usage. The Kemco International System is based on well proven technologies, developed and patented in the United States and sold to very many installations across a range of heavy usage industries requiring large quantities of process water. It does not rely on any form of pressurised vessel at any stage in the cleaning and purification process, with consequent significant savings in maintenance and without the statutory requirement of having to carry out pressure vessel testing and total dismantling for insurance purposes once per year. In corporate terms, Kemco International is the newly formed entity created out of the merged interests of Kemco in Florida and Dunlop Design Engineering based in Lisburn NI. Together these two make what certainly appears to be a very strong and creditable force in the energy saving and water recycling business and their success has already given better than quoted results to their customers in a number of UK laundries as well as in very many US plants. The Texcare event in 2008 brought about record requests for more detailed plant analysis by Kemco. According to information which we gleaned elsewhere in the Hall, more than 270 such requests are said to have been received before the close. All forms of energy saving, water treatment and recycling are seen as expensive to install. A close look at two of the leading contenders for your business will quickly dispel these ‘industry urban myths’ and payback of the investment in a matter of a few months is the norm. From RFID and advanced software to the massive business of mats, matting and this very important rental laundry product from the originator of the dust mat business forty years ago. Now operating from Austria, England and Poland as Kleen-Tex Europe GmbH, this booth had spectacular illustrations of the art of floor protection and the dramatic backdrop of a shark swimming behind the booth stopped people in their tracks in the aisle as they passed. Boasting a regular range of selections from over 2100 standard mats in many colours and designs suitable for a host of different uses, Kleen-Tex truly cover the floor protection market in the wealth of options available to the rental laundry operator who really wishes to expand his business in a very profitable direction. With sales and support staff able to converse sensibly with customers in no less than ten European languages, the Kleen- Tex sales operation is well set to give every customer the service which they would wish to give themselves. Dust mats aren’t hardware but they certainly can come with RFID chips built-in and are ready to give many years of well-defined artistic and durable service. Meanwhile, back at the Kannegiesser exhibition booth things were so hectic in terms of visitors and invited, laundry business men, that there was almost no room for travelling reporters to see and closely examine the impressive array of kit. Most significant to us was the impression created and left lingering in the enormous interest created by the Kendal-built Revolution. We have discussed this machine before in Laundry & Cleaning Today and the impression which the up-rated exhibition system left on the masses of observers was palpable. Visitors to other booths across the Hall told us of their astonishment at the achievement of the Kannegiesser UK engineers in bringing to market such a comprehensive piece of productive machinery. Aside from the Revolution the PowerTrans Jet Press created a strong impression where the rinsing action takes place in the PowerPress 40Bar Turbo extractor, and still meets with full Höhenstein Institut approval as to efficiency and ratings in performance. A two-minute cycle time with a 50kg batch, water consumption of 3 Litres per kg. and rinsing above and beyond the recognised industry standard, mark this system out for commercial success in the hotel and hospital laundry business and any other plant where space is at a premium. In the ironer department Kannegiesser showed for the first time the HPM Ironer with heating band technology and individual gas fired heating. The conventional chest model SHM was shown previously at the Vlotho Open House and the liquid phase oil heating method has thus achieved considerable recognition in performance. An interesting ‘concept’ system was also introduced at Texcare in the form of the ASS Automatic Sorting System whereby a batch of work was able to be sorted and measured according to size, weight, colour and type of textile. This was shown only as a ‘concept’ system but visitors showed considerable interest over the five days of the show. Finally the new EMA Feeding System was shown which enables a rated speed of 1600 sheets and other flatwork items per hour, in single lane operation and up to 2100 items in two lane operations. All in all the Kannegiesser booth illustrated exactly why the laundry machinery supply business is achieving extraordinary levels of reliable sophistication in daily work schedules. The technical facilities of the machines demonstrated here, proved beyond doubt that a new era in performance has been created and the Texcare show of 2008 will become the benchmark for any future performance discussions.
