LAUNDRY day can be a daunting experience. So spare a thought for the staff at Capital Linen Service, the territory's largest commercial laundry.
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The ACT government-owned enterprise washes about 110 tonnes of linen each week - roughly 180,000 items each day.
It launders about 10 million items each year for more than 100 customers, public and private, across the region. Clients include hospitals, health and aged-care providers, hotels, tourist attractions and emergency services.
The service, established in Mitchell in 1978, is one of the top 10 commercial laundries in Australia.
Dirty linen is cleaned via two industrial washers (capable of washing 30-50 kilogram loads an hour), nine dryers (able to dry 100 kilograms of towelling in seven minutes per machine) and five ironers (capable of 1000 sheets an hour).
Customer support manager Mickey Viljoen said the operation owns the linen and rents it to the client.
She said they offer more than 200 products for rent, ranging from sterile theatre linen, table cloths and napkins to hospital scrubs, baby clothes and pyjamas. Ms Viljoen said the operation services about 5000 beds in Canberra a day - equating to about 1.8 million beds across accommodation and health sectors each year. The business runs every day except for Christmas and Easter. ''Hospitals and motels don't stop, if we stopped, they would stop,'' Ms Viljoen said. ''It's an essential service because the hospital can't service a client without linen and accommodation cannot sell a bed without linen.''
Even the Mitchell fire didn't stop the service, with staff setting up a makeshift headquarters at Exhibition Park and sub-contracting to another laundry. Operations manager Peter Arton said the service constantly invested in new technology. He said a water re-use system had helped the service reduce its water use by 67 per cent.