News & Innovations

Perfectly Sustainable

A Shared Sense for Trends
Greif Textile Mietsysteme is a regional market leader and industry specialist in the field of rental laundry for the hotel and hospitality sector. Alongside hotel laundry, Greif Textile Mietsysteme, as a full-service provider in textiles rental systems, also offers workwear, dirt collection mats, laundry room products, and bed linen. The company’s origins began almost a century ago. The ironing parlor that Franziska Steinbichler founded in Augsburg in 1922 has grown to become a modern textile service company with nine sites and 1,400 employees across Germany.

The company's management is now in the hands of the fourth generation of the family. Alongside Walter Greif Jr. and Angelika Greif, their children Markus, Martin and Andrea Greif are continuing the family tradition: With their excellent sense for trends, they focus on promising, forward-thinking areas of business that are increasing, including sustainability awareness in the hotel and hospitality sector.

100% Sustainability for Langenfeld
Greif West GmbH & Co. KG in Langenfeld, situated between Düsseldorf and Cologne, has been the company’s base in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2009. With 90 employees, it handles 22 tons of laundry a day. This is the same as the incredible number of over 3,500 domestic washing machines - every day! With this volume, the production equipment needs to run reliably and deliver the best quality: The JENSEN Senking Universal SL batch tunnel washer and the JENSEN SEP 50 SL medium-pressure water extraction press play a big part in helping Robert Zirny, operations manager in Langenfeld, to supply customers with first-class laundry. Even before the decision was made to purchase new equipment, one JENSEN press was in constant operation and, after decades of reliable service, had finally allowed to enjoy a well-earned retirement.

The complete reuse of the rinsing and pressing water is part of an SL machine's basic design. To do this, the batch tunnel washer and water extraction press are connected to form a single unit and the extracted water is fed back via a pipeline directly into the rinsing zone. By doing away with a recovery tank, heat losses are also reduced and valuable energy is saved.

“Sustainability is not a tiresome eco issue, but rather an ingredient for a successful concept”, confirms Managing Director Markus Greif. The patented washing process of the JENSEN batch tunnel washing system in the SL version, with one hundred percent recovery without tanks, is especially designed for laundry types with high hygiene requirements. This 100% is perfectly sustainable and also ideal for the stringent demands of hotel guests and restaurant visitors.

JENSEN Tunnel Washers for Maximum Hygiene
As a quality-conscious company, Greif Textile Mietsysteme is responsible for delivering hygienic goods. The best possible quality of its services always takes top priority in order to guarantee customer satisfaction.

The JENSEN Senking Universal SL delivers first-class hygiene and has already been used for a number of years at the company's Augsburg base. By eliminating recovery tanks and using only one or two central pipelines, dirt and bacteria build-up are avoided. All pipelines are also made from stainless steel, effectively preventing corrosion and contamination. The amount of maintenance required is much less since there is no need to carry out the regular and often difficult task of cleaning tanks. This means that laundry processing is made much faster.

Tremendous Praise to the Team
At JENSEN, we believe in loyal partnership before, during and after the project. Our longstanding and trusting relationship with Greif was therefore key in the decision to invest in a new laundry system from JENSEN. Even before the JENSEN batch tunnel washing system was shipped, operations manager Robert Zirny was trained, and together with JENSEN Sales Manager Sascha Wehr, washing programs were pre-set to ensure smooth commissioning and the immediate start of production.

And yet sometimes, not everything goes to plan. The space available in the laundry building was a challenge, which means that Greif had to make some modifications to the building before the machines were delivered. Damage resulting from this work meant that the arrival of the machines on site was delayed by a week. Exactly seven days after the originally agreed installation date, everyone met again in Langenfeld to transfer the batch tunnel washer and water extraction press to its new location. “The JENSEN engineers and the project team led by Mr Wehr deserve tremendous praise”, confirms Robert Zirny. “The guys at JENSEN found a solution immediately for the unexpected problems.”

The new batch washing system in Langenfeld has been in operation since mid-November. After the first few days of production, the process was fine-tuned a little. “Just yesterday, thanks to the fact that the new press is able to press towels at 37 bar, I was able to reduce the drying time on the 100 kg dryers by two minutes”, says Robert Zirny delightedly, three days after the machines went into service.

After all, this is sustainability too: Setting processes so they are as effective as possible and customer-specific and saving energy, water, time and money.