Partnership Milnor & Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service

A partnership between Milnor and Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service has resulted in a state-of-the-art new healthcare laundry in Kelowna, British Columbia, that is loaded with energy, chemicals and water-saving efficiencies that offer environmentally friendly sustainability along with built-in reliability.

80 Healthcare facilities

Bryan Bartsch, vice president of group operations, and Randy Bartsch, CEO, worked with authorized Milnor dealer Nicholson Mechanical Ltd to build a new plant in Kelowna, British Columbia. The laundry was designed to service 80 healthcare facilities scattered geographically in the interior region of British Columbia, including Kelowna, Kamloops, Vernon, Penticton, Trail, Nelson, Castlegar, Cranbrook, and Salmon Arm. Ecotex designed its Kelowna laundry to meet current and future client volumes while incorporating redundancy into every aspect of the plant. Every piece of equipment has a duplicate machine to ensure they will always be able to run.

PulseFlow

With PulseFlow technology, Ecotex-Kelowna has been able to achieve water usage of less than one gallon per pound of linen (8 liters per kilogram) plant-wide. PulseFlow technology works by beginning with the patented first module feature, RecircONE® wet down to inundate the linen with recirculating water and first module chemistry at a rate of almost 400 liters per minute. This process allows the washing to start immediately, which saves time and the need for dedicated wet down modules that are utilized in bottom transfer tunnels. Over the last year, the laundry has operated 10 hours per day, seven days per week and processes 18 million pounds (8,164,663 kg) per year. The 100 full-time employees provide off-site laundry services, onsite laundry distribution at acute care hospitals, and operate the regional distribution services. “The Milnor system has been operating for one year now and has achieved nearly 100% uptime,” says Bryan.

Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service, founded in 1974, has been operating plants and providing healthcare linen services in Canada and the United States of America for nearly 45 years. Ecotex is an established industry leader in environmental sustainability and is a certified Clean Green company by Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) for its environmental laundry practices. The facility incorporates the industry’s best practices for energy conservation and fresh water use and is designed to reduce the environmental footprint from laundry generated by a health system by more than 60%.