SPOTLIGHT ON SOUTH AND PACIFIC ASIA
Khandelwal, managing director of Ecolab India told LCni, Ecolab remains committed to innovation, sustainability, and growth in the laundry and textile care market in India and South Asia.
In recent years the company has launched a new line of products for the region, planning a further expansion in years to come. Khandelwal comments: “Ecolab provides comprehensive commercial laundry solutions, focusing on improving operations to achieve customers’ goals. Our offerings include innovative and data-driven cleaning technology, smart solutions to optimise operations, and personal service and consulting. Our commercial laundry data intelligence platform delivers real-time visibility of entire operations with data-driven insights. With the increased focus and need for sustainability, we have introduced a new range of environment-friendly cleaning products. Our optimisation solutions for treating wastewater streams and water recycling, help improve water and energy efficiency.
“Additionally, by leveraging our technological capabilities, we help businesses create water management strategies that ‘reduce, reuse and recycle.” The company sees strong indicators for significant growth in demand for laundry and drycleaning services in India and the surrounding South Asian region, prompted by rapid urbanisation, increasing disposable income and a growing hospitality sector.
Khandelwal continues: “As more people move to urban areas, the demand for professional laundry services increases due to a busier lifestyle and the convenience these services offer. This is supported by an increase in disposable income, wherein more households can afford professional laundry services. Additionally, with the exponential expansion within the hospitality industry, there is a growing demand from hotels and restaurants for high-quality laundry services that meet their exacting standards.”
Still, according to the company, there are serious challenges, which prevent its more active growth in the Indian market: Laundry services deploy a substantial amount of water. Efficient water management is especially crucial, given that several parts of South-Asia are water stressed
Laundry services are energy-intensive. @LCNiMag ENVIRONMENT CONSCIOUS: A trend towards environmentally friendly solutions September 2024 | LCNi 11
Efficient energy management can positively impact the profitability of laundry businesses. The introduction of stricter
environmental regulations has prompted the need for environmentally-friendly and sustainable solutions within the laundry services industry
In addition to the South Asia region, the company has also plans to accelerate its expansion in the Asia Pacific region, where it also sees significant opportunities for growth.
Lionel Kapetanakos, Ecolab’s Institutional Business, Asia Pacific Strategic Business Leader, comments: “Laundry in Asia Pacific will move from inhouse laundry. Our customers, hotels, hospitals and so on are moving to commercial laundry operations. The cost to operate your own on-premise laundry today is really getting prohibitive, in terms of capital expenditure, repairs and maintenance, water and energy, labour and of course space is at a premium in Singapore and laundries in commercial spaces like hotels have a large footprint. “We are also seeing more end users, hotels, restaurants…convert from buying their own linen to using rental linen from suppliers. Drycleaning has also reduced. The first reason is of course the capital costs to set up a drycleaning operation. Second reason is that the traditional solvent used in drycleaning
is not environmentally friendly with some converting from Perc solvent to hydrocarbon or silicon. The market seems to be moving towards more of a wetclean operation which can work with items that usually need be drycleaned.”
High costs, particularly for labour, water and energy continue to put on serious pressure for Ecolab and other global players, operating in the region.
Kapetanakos continues: “The rising cost of labour, water, energy, linen replacement is certainly increasing the costs of operating today. Commercial laundries are looking to new technologies to get more efficient and more sustainable in the way they process linen. This means using less water, less energy to heat the water and chemicals which are safer for the environment. They need to maintain linen integrity, which means using a washing process that provides linen longevity, form, and colour. Their customers demand a high-quality product and in today’s competitive environment there is no room for poor quality. As for Ecolab, the company helps its customers wash linen in temperatures as low as 40C, we do this by using the latest advancements in chemical technology, which reduces energy costs, uses less water, shortens the wash cycle times while increases the life of the linen. This helps laundries reduce their operating costs, while delivering an end result their customers expect.”
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