The recent NLG meeting held on 5 December 2018 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Leeds. A report by Laundry & Cleaning Today

Alastair McGuffie opened the Vision Support Services sponsored conference to a capacity crowd, jokingly saying that he was nervous talking to so many people. The conference started with a few welcomes to new attendees Colin and Graham Oakley from Laundry Efficiency, Amanda and Chris Gaynard from Speedy Laundry, Stuart Ireland from ACF and finally Rona Tait and Shona Millar from TDS Laundry.

The first speaker for the day – Fraser Donaldson, group hospitality director for Vision – spoke of his hospitality background and of the 150-year history of the Vision brand. He continued with an overview of the company and how the laundry market represents roughly £15million turnover for Vision in the UK and a further £5million in Europe. The laundry side has a target to grow to £25million by 2020 with a target of £100million for the total business. He made a valid point to the audience – the core of their business has always been the UK laundry market.

In summary, Vision’s aim going forward is to get out and meet all their customers, to address their concerns and learn how to build on the Vision success for the future. Jan-Willem van Doornewaard from Foltex was next to the podium. He talked to the audience about the humble beginnings of his company, established in 2013 and currently located in a 4000m² production facility in officially the smartest region in the world – Eindhoven – home of Phillips Electronics and DAF trucks. In six years, they have moved three times due to the rapid growth of the company.

Foltex currently manufacture 200-250 pieces of equipment per year, focusing on quality rather than quantity, hence their slogan – ‘Simple Reliable’ – meaning the machines are not highly complicated and should a problem arise engineers can locate the issue and deal with it in minimal time. With the aid of a slide show van Doornewaard explained the Foltex range of equipment and benefits from the feeders and folders to the stackers.

The afternoon session commenced with Alastair McGuffie offering a stark warning from experience on how companies should ensure transport should be regularly maintained and inspected. He explained how one of NLG members vehicles was stopped twice again for the same offence but the first the company knew of the problem was when the traffic commissioner sent a letter of infringement. Following a visit from the commissioner to the laundry transport office, the transport manager was asked to produce several documents of which only about 10 per cent could be produced.