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New Industrial Laundry to be Built with 50% Reuse of Pumped Water
28/06/2006
Initial Textile Services is building a new industrial laundry complex in the Lokeren industrial zone in Belgium. Construction, which began on 6 June 2006, is being built on 20,000 m2 of land at Moortelstraat 12 and with a budget of €15,300,000.
The complex will consist of the laundry, warehousing, dispatching and the administrative offices needed for customer services and the sales teams. Construction will also include an environmentally friendly water treatment installation, using a Membrane Bio Reactor, to permit the reuse of up to 50% of pumped water.
Although the Lokeren facility will be highly automated, it will still provide an additional 15 new roles. The new facility replaces one of the company’s oldest operations in Zele.
Initial Textile Services began this project having decided on a phased approach that included a research tour of the leading comparable organisations in France, Germany and The Netherlands. The knowledge and insights gathered from this research formed the basis of a new concept, which was then further developed by in-house task teams, each with its own specialisation including energy, environment, finances, etc.
The construction design took into account the growth potential of the business by leaving space for the facility to be expanded and for Initial Textile Services to further develop its position as market leader.
Notes to Editors
Initial Textile Services has an annual turnover of €60,100,000 and employs 772 people. Its facilities in Brecht, Hoogstraten, Zele, Schaerbeek, Merksem, Malle and Heppignies are focussed on the renting and maintenance of sanitary equipment, workwear, dustmats and linen.
Initial Textile Services starts with a needs analysis and taking measurements at the customer's location. The service people come on an agreed day each week to collect the dirty laundry from the customer. The workwear is sorted in the laundry and cleaned appropriately. Each garment is checked separately and, if needed, modified, repaired, or replaced. After finishing – ironing, folding, and packaging – Initial Textile Services delivers the cleaned garments to the customer, in some cases to specially designed lockers.
Since each garment carries a unique barcode, our customer service department can trace each garment through the entire system, and make changes during the process as required. The barcode is also the basis for our automatic invoicing.
Since Initial Textile Services highly values the environment and safety, the company uses only automatically measured amounts of biodegradable detergents in energy-saving automatic washing systems. Even rainwater is reused as far as possible. Environmentally friendly natural gas is the sole energy source used.
Initial Hospital Services has 614 employees, creating €34,500,000 of annual revenue. It has departments in Hoogstraten, Lokeren, Vilvoorde, Doornik and Eeklo, and is active in the management of workwear and linen for hospitals and care-giving institutions.
