Coordinating 41 New Machines Across Nine Care Homes
Parklands Group provides residential, respite, nursing, personal and palliative care across Moray and the Highlands. At the time of this project, it operated nine care homes and employed around 650 staff.
With existing laundry agreements reaching the end of their term and the new Eilean Dubh home opening in Fortrose, Operations Director Elaine Taylor wanted a coordinated equipment renewal. Thain Commercial worked with her team to supply 41 new Miele machines across all nine locations, combining replacement equipment with laundry provision for the new home.
A Grouped Equipment Renewal
Parklands had used commercial Miele washing machines and tumble dryers since 2000 and had worked with Thain Commercial for seven years by the time of this project. Renewing the equipment together would bring the machines across its homes to a similar age and standard.
Elaine and her team chose to continue with Miele Professional, based on their experience of its reliability and suitability for use around the clock. The specification ranged from Little Giants to larger Benchmark washers and dryers, supplied through a five-year, fully maintained laundry equipment rental agreement.
The rental model means we can benefit from the latest laundry technology and rest assured that all parts, labour and maintenance are included for one fixed cost throughout the term, making it easy to budget around our laundry operations across all nine of our homes.
Designing the Laundry Flow at Eilean Dubh
Eilean Dubh opened in early 2021 with 40 en-suite rooms. Thain Commercial worked with Elaine and the Parklands team to plan its laundry around infection prevention and control.
A dedicated entrance brought soiled laundry into the facility. Items progressed through washing, drying, ironing and sorting before returning to the care home through a separate clean-laundry exit.
The wider installation programme followed the Covid-19 restrictions and individual site protocols in place at the time. Kevin Thain and the team completed two to three installations each week, allowing all nine homes to receive their new equipment promptly.
Programmes Dosing and Laundry Finishing
The new equipment provided specialist washing programmes suited to care-home laundry, together with automatic detergent dosing. Dispensing the required amount for each cycle helped minimise detergent wastage and control costs.
Elaine highlighted the choice of wash cycles, equipment quality and energy efficiency as benefits for the homes. Adjustable residual moisture settings also helped the laundry teams prepare different fabrics for finishing.
The tumble dryers can be set according to the fabric type to leave in a certain amount of moisture, which makes clothes and sheets easier to iron and results in a significant time saving for the laundry teams.
Customer Feedback
Having high-quality and reliable laundry equipment is hugely important to delivering the standard of care we pride ourselves on. Not only does it enable us to take good care of residents' clothing, bedding and towels, and turn fresh, clean laundry around quickly, but it's also crucial in ensuring best practice infection control. At Parklands, we base our business relationships on trust. I've worked with Kevin Thain and his team for many years and it's great to work with likeminded suppliers. I can always rely on excellent service from Thain Commercial and they're always happy to help, whether it be for advice on new products or repair of existing appliances.
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