News & Innovations

The Medical Laundry Pioneers of Bahrain

Investing in a new central medical laundry
Investing in a new central laundry is no small decision, especially when it also involves bringing the concept into a new market. Nevertheless, the management team at Capital Laundry WLL saw both the investment’s potential as well as the value that a central laundry would bring to healthcare providers in the area. After conducting an independent market assessment, they discovered that recent growth in Bahrain’s healthcare sector resulted in a significant increase in demand for medical linen services. On top of this, there is roughly 46 tons of linen per day in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, just across the Causeway. The team decided the time was right to establish a modern central laundry to process medical linen.

Leave it to the professionals
Healthcare businesses would rather focus on their core business – providing quality healthcare services to patients and customers. This is what they do best, and when suitable options are available, it makes sense to outsource supplemental services like food and beverage, housekeeping, and laundry. Laundry is a particularly complex process, and a dedicated laundry team can fully focus on better washing, safety and hygiene. Leaving laundry to the laundry professionals is an easier way to offer better health care and premium laundry service.

Better equipment for better service
Healthcare establishments with an in-house laundry are often challenged by space limitation and daily volumes, which can impact equipment decisions and implementation of higher handling standards. Conversely, a central laundry’s space is designed specifically to maximize safety and hygiene, and thanks to processing much larger volumes, central laundries can rationalize investments in more advanced equipment. After calculating the potential of a central medical laundry, Capital Laundry realized they could build Bahrain’s first highly modern laundry with top quality equipment, such as a tunnel washer and barrier washers.

Thanks to their advanced equipment and material flow design, they can offer higher quality medical linen services. Dr. Husain Hamad, Founder and General Manager of Capital Laundry, explained their concept, “At Capital Laundry, we can better manage the risk of cross-contamination. We introduced the usage of tunnel washers to the Kingdom, to ensure minimal error and human interaction during the washing process. Furthermore, our quality checks by our shop floor supervisors ensure the strictest adherence to quality and hygiene at all times.”

In addition to offering better hygiene and washing quality, by processing larger volumes, they can offer very cost-effective services. Compared to a standard in-house laundry, their equipment has the added advantage of significantly higher automation as well as lower steam and water consumption. “Because we can process larger volumes of linen, we receive more value from cost saving equipment like our tunnel washer,” explained Dr. Hamad. “As a result, Capital Laundry offers services that are more cost effective than running an in-house laundry.“ 

Why did we choose JENSEN?
“After we confirmed our decision to build a medical laundry, our next big decision was selecting an equipment supplier,” explained Dr. Hamad.  “We looked at several different brands, but we quickly zeroed in on JENSEN. Being the global market leader in this industry, they are well known and respected for their technical excellence. This became clear even from the first discussion.”

Capital Laundry decided on a range of machines from JENSEN and ALPHA by JENSEN. ALPHA by JENSEN is the second brand of the JENSEN-GROUP, offering the same service, technical expertise, availability, and quality as JENSEN solutions. As ALPHA by JENSEN machines come with fewer customizations and options, they have proven to be ideal solutions for many customers with standard equipment requirements. 

“We also understand from many testimonials by existing customers that JENSEN is unique in our market when it comes to ongoing technical support and building a partnership for our long-term success — this is equally important as product quality — with JENSEN’s local presence, we trust their abilities to support us.”  

Capital Laundry’s equipment advantage 
One of the biggest equipment advantages is on the washroom side. Capital Laundry purchased the first ever tunnel washer in the Kingdom of Bahrain, an ALPHA TW5. It connects with a SEP 60 press and ALPHA D5 dryers to fully automate the washroom process. The ALPHA TW5 has a specially designed steam heating system that rapidly achieves homogenous temperatures required for proper disinfection, and chemicals and water are dispensed based on actual batch weight to ensure that every batch is precisely cleaned. Also, the ALPHA TW5 utilizes JENSEN’s legendary Archimedean helix drum design and is known internationally for excellent water and steam consumption. It’s no wonder that the ALPHA TW5 is not only used in every major developed market, but it has also been selected as the first tunnel washer in over half a dozen markets around the world!

In addition to a tunnel washer, they also utilize JBW barrier washers with JTD tumble dryers to hygienically process smaller batch sizes. Like tunnel washers, barrier washers separate clean and soiled linen resulting in a more hygienic process.

For flatwork finishing they utilize a full ALPHA ironing line including the ALPHA F7 feeder, ALPHA I5 ironer, ALPHA X5 folder and ALPHA S5 stacker. This high efficiency line requires fewer operators to separate, prepare and feed the linen. Fewer operators translates to fewer touches, which improves the overall hygiene of finished linen. They also run a JENSEN Blanket folder for fast, simple, and reliable folding of blankets. For uniform finishing, they use JENSEN’s Steam tunnel finisher. The laundry has also been designed to double its existing capacity as more linen is brought in.

Set up for the future
When the right team enters a market with the right tools at the right time, they are certainly set up for success, and Capital Laundry has meticulously ticked all these boxes. JENSEN is proud that Capital Laundry WLL decided on JENSEN as their equipment supplier. We are confident that thanks to smart research and decision making, they have all the necessary tools to offer an exceptional medical linen service to the Kingdom of Bahrain and beyond. We look forward to supporting Capital Laundry through their many years of success.