Elis UK opens industry-leading healthcare facility
In a move reflecting its commitment to providing market-leading customer service, Elis UK has created a new state-of-the-art processing facility for healthcare linen. Situated in Dartford, the new 8,900 square metre facility began processing healthcare linen in October with an official opening planned for early 2020.
Built in accordance with UK and European best practice, Elis Dartford is the latest world class facility to be opened by the business and has been purpose-designed to deliver industry leading performance in the areas of hygiene, employee health and safety, and continuity of supply.
The facility incorporates numerous industry innovations.
- The creation of a uniquely designed control point which completely separates the clean and soil sides of the plant. This includes magnetic interlocking doors to reduce air moving between the soiled and clean areas.
- The inclusion of an automated red bag process to avoid any personal contact with foul and infected linen.
- An automated suction system which allowing the efficient recycling of plastic bags, whilst also assisting the working conditions of the staff in the sorting area.
- The inclusion of a data management control system to enable real-time tracking of customer linen and provide traceability.
- An automated quality management and reject control system.
- The inclusion of CBW washer loading chute door, to significantly reduce the risk of introducing airborne bacteria into the working environment.
The design of the Dartford site has also enabled Elis to reduce the number of linen touch points from the normal industry standard of six to just three.
With space for over a thousand packed cages inside the building and nine loading bays, Elis Dartford can already process up to four tonnes of linen per hour with expansion capability to double that figure.
At this phase of installation, current capacity is 700,000 pieces per week / 295 Tonnes per week (or a monthly capacity is 3,033,333 pieces / 1,278 Tonnes per month).
Current volumes produced is 530,000 pieces per week / 223 Tonnes per week (or a monthly current volume of 2,296,666 pieces / 966 Tonnes per month).
If our Healthcare estate should reach a point whereby capacity in the South East is compromised, we can order and install the next phase quickly (within 3 months) to raise site capacity to double (1.4m pieces per week), making Elis Dartford one of the largest healthcare laundries in Europe.
