From October 21st till October 23rd the Expo Detergo show was organised at Milan in Italy. The show was well attended. Perhaps in numbers a little less visitors, but with a good business climate and personal contacts. Inspiring new machineries and systems, including new robot and automation technologies, innovative software, new finishing equipment, et cetera.
The suppliers to the textile service industry showed a large amount of novelties and innovative techniques and machines.
Laundry technology
Lavatec shared a booth with Vega systems and presented their new LavaCascade, a cascade dryer system, which is claimed to lead to significant energy savings. In the LavaCascade, drum dryers are coupled in cascade to prevent cooling down of hot machines and to enable re-use of hot air in other drum dryers.
Kannegiesser showed their new RFT towel feeding robot, which coupled to a XFM-SR folding machine, is able to transform fully automatically a pile of towels coming from the dryer into sorted folded towels. Robotics was actually a hot item.
And of course, the frontrunner in this area, the Dutch company Laundry Robotics, displayed their towel robot Robin and his smaller brother Roy.
Inwatec also showed an automated sorting system for soiled laundry, based upon their robot laundry separator Thor.
The US-based laundry equipment manufacturer Milnor showed a new cost-effective washing tunnel, made in China. The washing tunnel built on the US quality standard is modular built-up of individually driven washing chambers, so the tunnel can be built completely flexible according to client specifications.
Detergents
Christeyns showed their new sustainable laundry technology EPIC. This detergent system is based upon enzyme technology for dedicated soil removal, leading to a low washing temperature and low waste water costs. Christeyns also showed their HydRO technology for waste water treatment and re-use.
Büfa showed their Elements detergent, a modular detergent concept, which is made up of a number of modular components, which with a dedicated dossing and blending system , can be combined in situ at the site of the customer to a dedicated detergent.
Kreussler introduced their OptiCare 50° Green for washing at 50 °C, which is in the opinion of Kreussler the optimal temperature for washing, with an optimal score on the combination of textile life, washing performance and energy consumption. Kreussler also introduced Ottalin Optibleach, a low temperature bleach activator with a performance equal to chlorine bleach, specifically designed extremely soiled textiles, as e.g. kitchen linen. The focus at Seitz was at ecological detergents with the Ecolabel.
Dry cleaning and finishing technology
Union presented the newly developed innovative ECO CONCEPT drycleaning system, conceived and designed to reduce energy consumption for significant economic savinds and greater respect for the environment.
Böwe showed an energy saving condensate trap for their dry cleaning machines and a very compact pop for finishing.
Sankosha showed their new finishing tunnel, the press free finisher ST 9000 and the folding machine AF100.
Both machines were designed for costprice effective high through-put finishing of laundry goods.
Veit showed their Veit tunnel finisher for the same type of application, focussing also on energy savings. Veit also showed their new shirt finisher with a steam suction section above the finisher for heat recovery and by removing the steam also creating a more pleasant working atmosphere.
Also Trevil showed a shirt finisher with steam suction on top, apart from their high throughput shirt finishers and a vertical press for pants. High-throughput carrousel shirt finishers and toppers were also shown at the booth of Macpi.
