Reviving all and any stained or discoloured linen with Regenex offers laundries significant cash savings on buying new.

However, at the top of the list in terms of potential to cut costs as well as carbon, is the double duvet cover.

Here, Regenex’s technical director Paul Hamilton, talks us through some facts and figures to make clear the benefits to be gained from working with Regenex.

So, why focus on double duvet covers?

As items of linen go – from napkins and face cloths upwards – double duvet covers are a high value staple of the housekeeper’s store cupboard.

Typically a laundry might pay £10 for a mid-range double duvet cover weighing 1.2kg, though there are certainly more expensive ones available from trade suppliers. The same calculations can be adapted for king-size covers.

But £10 isn’t a major expense to a large laundry.

No, but bedding is easily marked, often very early in its useful life – with fake tan, make-up, dirt from suitcases, or any other given substance – and the ‘condemned’ pile can easily grow.

Let’s look at the big picture. A large laundry handles many thousands of double duvet covers, adding up to significant outlays for topping up stock.

So, a LOT of money can be saved?

Yes! Let’s imagine a laundry has 10,000 double duvet covers, worth £100,000 new, that are heavily stained or discoloured and therefore only fit for landfill or rag.

The chances are that Regenex can successfully revive 80% of those duvets to pristine, white condition, provided that they are not ripped or torn. But, to be conservative, let’s say we can return 72%.

So, 10,000 duvets weighing 12 tonnes are sent to Regenex. We charge only for successful treatment – in this case 8.6 tonnes, or 7,200 items.  Our fee would be £30,240 – or £3.50 per kilo.

This compares very favourably with the expense of buying 7,200 new duvet covers at £10 each, or £72,000 in total. So, by using Regenex, and avoiding unnecessary purchase of new items, a laundry would save £41,760.

But a new duvet would have more life in it than a cleaned and returned one.

Possibly, but stained items are often discarded very early in their life cycle, within the first few uses. The Regenex process has been independently tested and verified not to significantly compromise the tensile strength of cottons and polycottons.

Most hotel linen is condemned due to marks and discoloration, rather than it being ‘worn out’. Laundries can of course control what is sent to Regenex, and avoid including well-worn items in their consignments.

How does Regenex treat linen, again?

We have developed a gentle, multi-bath process based on textile coloration chemistry that opens up fibres to release marks in ways that conventional laundry washes cannot.

Research and development of our treatments continues, so we are becoming ever more effective on a wide variety of blemishes.

By the way, we are not a laundry so we don’t press or fold processed linens.

And how does transportation work?

Laundries should arrange their own delivery to and from Regenex in Bradford, West Yorkshire. 

This sounds like it would help save carbon as well as money.

Yes, this is our main reason for being in business! Cash savings are simply a nice addition to the environmental benefits, which are the real gain here.

We could talk a lot about this but it’s all here in our most recent white paper, Loving linen longer: Five carbon and money saving reasons to get the most out of laundry stock.

The document has been a conversation starter for the laundry sector, and has received a lot of media attention. It’s now available to download from the homepage of our website.

OK, can we talk?

Yes we can.

Please call me, Paul Hamilton, on 07795 693345, or email me at paulhamilton@bulmerandlumb.com to discuss how we can work together.

Alternatively, connect with me on LinkedIn.