SPOTLIGHT ON THE UK
Global giants have an appetite for the UK market
Major global players are considering accelerating in the UK laundry and drycleaning market these days thanks to it maintaining stable demand for quality laundry and drycleaning services and prospects for further growth, says Eugene Gerden
lenty of challenges dog the UK which has had no fewer than four prime ministers since 2019 and is currently in the hands of Labour Premier Sir Keir Starmer who ousted Conservative incumbent Rishi Sunak last year. Since then, according to a report in The Guardian newspaper and website, as LCNi prepares to go to press ahead of what promises to be a controversial Budget, “unemployment in the UK has risen by more than expected to the highest level in four years, official figures show, amid a worsening slowdown
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in the jobs market before Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget”.
The report continues: “With under three weeks to go before the Chancellor’s tax and spending statement, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the headline unemployment rate rose to 5.0% in the three months to the end of September, up from 4.8% in the previous quarter.
“City economists had forecast an increase to 4.9%. Representing an increase in unemployment to 1.8 million, the official
jobless rate was last higher in January 2021, during the height of the Covid pandemic.”* There is also the factor of disillusionment in the current regime over its handling of the economy and a rise in interest in the right-wing Reform Party because of it. Of course, Labour has only been in power for one year so it’s a bit soon to expect miracles. Time will tell.
But at the moment inflation is the enemy, among a host of other factors, as Charlie Betteridge, chair of the Textile Services Association (TSA) in the UK will, and has, attested to. At the recent TSA conference he said that things aren‘t great but they are not catastrophic and perhaps the new normal – along with labour shortages, attracting and keeping talent, squeezed margins, the cost of utilities, Brexit – the list goes on.
However, for many global operators the UK market has always been a major priority, due to its maturity and the high purchasing power of its citizens. In recent years the level of competition in the market has significantly tightened, which has forced major players to pay more attention to the launch of new products and innovative solutions. Most leading operators consider this as one of the major recipes of success in such a highly competitive market.
If you need proof of the UK’s attractiveness to foreign investors, Canada’s K-Bro Linen completed in June its previously announced acquisition of UK- based Star Mayan for a cash purchase price of £107.2 million. The acquisition, said K-Bro, will complement K-Bro’s existing UK businesses, Fishers and Shortridge (the latter was added to the K-Bro portfolio in May 2024), and creates a national footprint in the UK’s £1.6 billion commercial laundry and textile rental sector.
COOL CAT: Resident Chief Mouser Larry at Number 10 Downing Street has seen a parade of Prime Ministers arrive and depart through the famous front door
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Elis already has a strong foothold in the UK and Johnson Service Group, a home- grown business established in 1817 operates
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