Liver Laundry’s managing director is also the chair of the National Association of the Launderette Industry (NALI) which is the UK’s Trade Association representing owners and operators of high-street launderettes, as well as individuals, companies or organisations offering self-service laundry or dry-cleaning facilities to the public.
NALI has been servicing the needs of this vital service industry for nearly 80 years. It is recognised by, and maintains contact with Government departments, Local Authorities and the Health and Safety Executive.
NALI is not the only body protecting the sector and ensuring that its contribution to the economy is properly and widely appreciated. Another key player is The Textile Services Association (TSA) which represents the broader textile services industry, including commercial laundries. Both NALI and the TSA support and advance the laundry industry through advocacy, training, and sustainability initiatives.
Hidden Sector
The TSA recently commissioned Hatch Research to update its findings from 2020 on the value of the laundry industry to the UK economy with the aim of protecting its long-term sustainability as well as raising awareness of its importance. Interestingly, Hatch calls us a “hidden sector”.
Using data from the last five years, Hatch has been able to chart and quantify the changes the industry has been through during this time.
Turnover is perhaps most striking, rising from £1.2 to £1.6bn. In the same time the number of people employed by the industry has fallen from 23,000 to 22,000. These changes demonstrate how the industry has driven productivity. The report also captured for the first time peak processed volumes which reported at over 75 million pieces per week.
Serving other industries
The report also demonstrates just how reliant almost every other economic sector is on the laundry industry focusing on three key markets, hospitality, healthcare and manufacturing.
Hospitality is worth £70bn in GVA to the UK economy and is heavily dependent on laundry services. A 100-room hotel, for example, will use approximately 750 pieces of linen each day and each has to be clean and fresh. It would have to close within three days with no clean linen arriving.
The majority of the UK’s 130,000 manufacturing operations require clean protective garments and therefore rely on our services too. Without clean workwear, production lines would grind to a halt within three days.
And healthcare, with hygiene and infection control so important, would be unable to admit any patients to their facilities withing two days if clean linen was not available.
As the Hatch report states: “The textile services sector sits behind practically every sector of the UK’s economy. The service it provides is core to the operations of many businesses in vital and important areas of the UK economy.”
The report therefore makes the case for how increasingly valuable our industry is the wider economy and that it can’t be ignored.
Lobbying for greater recognition
Yet, we are facing huge challenges – downward pressure on prices, rising production costs and significantly increased energy costs, so one of the purposes of the report is to provide evidence when lobbying government – which the TSA and NALI do as a matter of course – to make us more visible and heard.
NALI was created from the merger of two other representative organisations in 1956 and it monitors and takes appropriate action in response to legislation and other issues affecting launderette operations.
When you engage Liver Laundry’s services, seek our expertise and buy the products we promote through partnerships, you are not only supporting us, but also UK PLC, in the knowledge that our trade associations are also helping to ensure that your sector, whatever that may be, is being protected as well.
For more information on what we offer, please call 0151 263 7451.
