Textile Care – A 21st Century Dutch Wonder

On a recent tour of Textile Care in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Textile Services Weekly saw a massive, multilevel, high-tech hospitality laundry in the heart of Europe.

Founded in 1859 and now in its sixth generation of family ownership under Gerard van der Kleij and his son Daan, their company, formally known as Textielverzorging G van der Kleij & Zn, processes nearly 200,000 lbs. (90 metric tons) of rental hotel flatwork daily based on a five-day workweek. The plant, located in a suburban industrial park, takes up nearly 194,000 square feet (18,000 square meters).

Textile goods move seamlessly through this plant like a river of white, aided by a staff of 150 employees, a number that rises to 180 in the peak summer tourist season.

“We were struck by the scale and swift movement of hospitality goods through this facility,” said TRSA President and CEO Joseph Ricci, who was accompanied on this leg of the tour by Bob Hager, president and CEO of Miller’s Textiles, Wapakoneta, OH, and his wife Lorrie. Bob, a member of TRSA’s Board of Directors, joined Ricci and board colleagues in Helsinki from June 10-14 for a series of meetings and plant tours.

Ilja Buunk, sales manager for JENSEN-GROUP NV – SCC Netherlands, led the Textile Services Weekly tour of the Textile Care plant. We soon learned that virtually all of the plant’s flatwork is fitted with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags from Datamars. This greatly simplifies the process of tracking goods through the plant. And since customers used “pooled” or rental goods, there’s less need to keep individual hotel customers separate. Their tagging technology also helps minimize losses. “In the contract, it states that if something’s missing, the customer would pay,” Gerard says.

We saw scanning equipment in the plant, which receives pre-sorted hospitality textiles from scores of hotel customers with a 46-mile (75-km.) radius of the plant. After scanning and weighing, goods are sorted in a hybrid system that includes a robotic sorting system from Inwatec. Smaller lots of textiles are sorted manually. Goods from both the automated and manual-sortation systems are moved into a series of JENSEN sorting chutes – four platforms in all. These allow goods to drop into slings below (click here to see a video of the automated sortation system). When the slings meet the correct weight, they are automatically dispatched by the plant’s JENSEN rail-sortation system to a storage area on a mezzanine level above. Next, they drop into any of six JENSEN Senking tunnel washers equipped with a range of 16-20 110 lb. (50 kg.) chambers. Goods are washed with the aid of wash chemistry from Chisteyns, using an automated chemical-injection system. After the goods emerge from the tunnel press they move via conveyor to any of 30, 220 kg. JENSEN dryers. One employee oversees the entire wash area. After drying, goods are moved back into slings and transported via conveyor/rail back to the lower level for finishing. Before they enter the finishing phase, “cakes” of pressed textiles move up to a gravity-fed JENSEN cake breaker that drops them roughly six feet to simplify feeding into the ironers. Next they move to any of 12 ironer lines. These machines, which include a mix of JENSEN and Lapauw equipment, are operated manually, as is the finishing and pack-out area.

Finished goods, with quantities set by the RFID tracking, next are loaded into metal “cages” – we saw no plastic carts in any of the five European laundries we visited in the first week of June. Operators told us that they prefer the longevity and hygienic qualities of the metal carts.

During a Q&A session after the tour, Gerard and Daan touched on several key issues, including:

Converting to EV vehicles: As in the U.S., regulators in the European Union and individual countries like the Netherlands are encouraging – and sometimes mandating – conversions to electric (EV) or other alt-fuel vehicles. Gerard said the problem in Holland is that the wait for an EV truck is 2.5 years and the cost is triple that of a diesel truck. While Dutch authorities aren’t forcing a move, Gerard said certain cities in the Netherlands are moving to restrict the use of fossil-fuel vehicles in the downtown areas at certain times of day.

Labor shortages: Gerard said staffing issues have stabilized since the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s difficult to get employees to work overtime. Textile Care draws from a diverse population, including immigrants from some 20 countries, he said. The tight labor supply is exacerbated by limited housing options for area residents, especially for those with modest incomes. “The biggest problem is here we have no place for living,” Gerard said. “You can’t rent houses; you cannot buy houses. They’re too expensive.”

Click here for a profile of CHMS, another European plant that Textile Services Weekly toured earlier this month. Watch for additional coverage of European plants online and in Textile Services magazine. Click here for more information or to subscribe to Textile Services.