If something has to be in perfect condition in a hotel, it is the sheets and towels. In a hospital, also, the clothing of health personnel. And in a restaurant, tablecloths and napkins. The 45 textile treatment plants – large-scale laundry – that Ilunion TextilCare has distributed throughout different parts of Spain provide washing and ironing services to all of these establishments, plus socio-health and industrial establishments.
A company of the ONCE Social Group, since it opened its first industrial laundry in 1992, it has evolved to become the Ilunion TextilCare brand, maintaining its main objective: “creating employment for people with some type of disability and including vulnerable populations,” in the words of David López Pachón, its general director.
An objective that they combine with those of profitability “that we need to reinvest every last euro”, governance and environmental management that reduces the impacts of its activity at all levels: carbon footprint, water and electricity consumption and waste generation and management.
In two hours, like new
The Ilunion TextilCare plant in Madrid is an example of the process that takes the 18,000 kilos of dirty linen that come in on any given day (more than 240,000 tons in total last year) to leave clean and ironed within 24 hours on the way to the 36 hotels it serves.
The process “of sorting, washing, ironing, folding and placing them in their respective carts – explains López Pachón, who guides us on a visit to the plant – is done in two hours. For collection and delivery, we apply reverse logistics: we return the clean clothes on the same trip in which we collect the dirty ones to optimize transportation.
The entire process is carried out with specific machines that wash, iron and fold the garments, with the essential participation of the operators. These collect the baskets from the trucks, sort towels, sheets and tablecloths, feed the washing tunnels, ironing equipment, (technically, calenders) and folding and place them in their corresponding carts.
In the last two years they have renovated the washing machinery, equipped with water recovery systems which consume about 5 liters of water per kilo of washing, and ironing, with lower gas and energy consumption. All of this has reduced the overall impact of the plant by achieving reductions “of 30% in fuel consumption, 25% in water consumption and 20% in electricity consumption.”
So that nothing is misplaced, every sheet, every towel, etc. It has a chip that identifies which establishment it belongs to. Traceability system that already passes its daily test on normal days, not to mention the days when up to 22 tons of clothing enter and leave: “there are times of the year of maximum demand: the months of March, April, September and October, due to fairs, congresses, Champions League matches, concerts or Pride week.