Meet the GBPAP18’s outstanding PTC showcases: Rentex Floron (NL)

For the coming period, we will present you week by week, the most outstanding PTC showcases that were officially nominated for The Global Best Practices Awards Program 2018. The profiles of these companies are also present in the WOPCOM platform, which you can access here.

Rentex Floron (NL)

There’s use of environmentally friendly materials and reuse of materials and textiles.

Rentex Floron is a Dutch laundry company that operates at an industrial scale and that was founded more than a century ago in Bolsward. Bolsward is one of the famous eleven cities in the province of Friesland which is in the North of the Netherlands. Current facilities have a surface of 17.000 m3. Weekly 480.000 kg of laundry is being processed, mainly aimed at healthcare hospitals and nursing homes. Main products being treated are flat linen and workwear.

Carousel processes 200.000 pieces of service clothing every week

A well-defined staff policy

The company offers work to more than 400 employees whose welfare and fitness are considered a key priority, regardless of their age. Rentex claims to be a frontrunner in collective wage increases in order to stay a competitive employer in the region. It is keen to recruit and select only the best people available. There’s an extensive training program for new employees. At least 1% of turnover is spend on education yearly. There’s also a good eye for social responsibility. As an example: Rentex offers work to mentally disabled people who normally would face difficulties in finding payed jobs in business industries. All employees are highly committed and take pride in giving customers the personal attention they deserve.


Loyal employees as a result of effective staff policy

Guarding service quality

Quality management is important for the company. Rentex has implemented several quality assurance systems, for example Certex. This is a quality management system based on ISO 9001, extended with textile treatment industry specific demands. With this certificate, Rentex can prove that it meets quality demands being an industrial laundry and laundry rental service. The company also meets RABC-demands which means that risks with respect to bio contamination have been strongly reduced. Of course, while serving hospitals and nursery homes, the control on bio contamination is of great importance with respect to the risks of infections being caused by polluted textiles.

A sustainable company

To become more and more sustainable, Rentex Floron continuously replaces older equipment with energy efficient alternatives. There’s a real time monitoring system to detect excessive energy consumption and there’s off course a very professional preventive maintenance schedule available to ensure all equipment functions at the best possible level. There’s availability of an own water recovery plant, which enables Rentex to operate with the lowest energy consumption per kg in the healthcare sector in the Netherlands. 91.000 m3 of water is recycled for reuse each year. The aim for the future is to use no portable water at all in 2021 and to reduce disposal of water to zero in 2020.

Rentex Floron is the first laundry in the Netherlands to use the “cool chemistry” process. This is a total washing concept that has an enormous positive effect on the use of resources without losing service quality. It combines advanced washing processes with innovative, specially designed chemicals and equipment to make it possible to wash at lower temperatures (40 degrees Celsius) while preserving a tremendous quality of washing, disinfection and bleaching. This concept has recently been introduced to all 8 large scale tunnels washers the company operates.

With regard to sustainability there are also smaller measures like:

  • Automatic shutdowns of ironers;
  • Incorporation of LED lighting and detection sensors;
  • All transport routes are registered in the ERP system as well as all vehicle movements and capacity utilization as a base for optimizing and lowering CO2 emissions;
  • There’s use of environmentally friendly materials and reuse of materials and textiles.

Innovation in every aspect of the business

Rentex is an innovative company as well. The CBS-equipment (Continuous Batch Washers) gives the company a large production capacity. These CBS-washers are industrial washing machines designed specifically to handle heavy loads of laundry. The screw is made of perforated metal, so items can progress through the washer in one direction, while water and washing chemicals move through in the opposite direction. Thus, the linen moves through pockets of progressively cleaner water and fresher chemicals.

Soiled linen can be continuously fed into one end of the tunnel while clean linen emerges from the other. The more modern, computerized tunnel washers can monitor and adjust the chemical levels in individual pockets to set a washing program dedicated to the cleaning phase of the laundry. Apart from this equipment, the company also operates about 15 (100 kg load) wash extractors.
The company has designed its own counter-flow-heat recovery system to reclaim energy form the waste water. It also is one of the few laundries in the Netherlands to have a professional sorting trolley for uniforms. This carousel processes 200.000 pieces of service clothing each week.


Main products being treated are flat linen and 
workwear

Focus on the customer’s customer

Actually, Rentex Floron is constantly investing in innovative, process improving and cost saving means of production. This is necessarily to improve customer satisfaction. It wants their customers to be able to focus on their core job of providing health services to people. Service is fully aimed at the comfort, hygiene and availability of products for patients and residents. In some cases Rentex even works directly for the residents of care institutions. Resident laundry can be packed per resident and the invoice (and collection) can even be sent directly to the resident.

Satisfaction of the customers of Rentex means that satisfaction of the customer’s customer has to be reached. That’s why an extensive satisfaction survey is being executed every 2 years.

Management of Rentex Floron is proud on operating one of the most modern and successful laundries in the Netherlands. In a pilot project with one of the main customers the availability of personal garments was increased form 85% to 98,5%. This is a degree of reliability which is unmatched in the Dutch healthcare market.