A crisp, clean, ‘detergenty’ fragrance welcomes one into the Magnamind Ventures building at Kinfra Park at Nellad, near Muvattupuzha. Magnamind is the brainchild of West Asia-based laundry industry professionals who have years of experience in the business.
There are no signs of washing and ironing, there is minimal activity and even fewer people. The reason, one is told, is that the plant works at night. Magnamind works with a number of hotels in Fort Kochi, Munnar, Kumarakom and Thrissur.
Linen used in these properties is laundered here. The soiled linen reaches the plant late in the evening (in keeping with the checkout time at hotels) from these areas and is sorted before they go into the washing machines.
Several dry cleaning and laundry units function in the vicinity of the city, then why go to faraway Muvattupuzha to set one up? Sreejith Narendran, managing director Magnamind, says, “The water. The quality of water reflects in the quality of the dry wash. White linen tends to yellow if it is washed with hard water. The water here is soft and suited for our use. It shows in the laundered linen.” Water is treated at an effluent treatment plant before it goes out of the unit since it is not used at the plant; it goes into KINFRA’s water reserve. The unit in Nellad, according to the company, uses modern energy efficient equipment that can save up to 40 per cent water while compared to traditionally available commercial washers.
The machines are all top of the line, the best in the business with varying capacities – from 50 kg to 200 kg cycles. The cycles can be adjusted depending on the load. For smaller loads–like a hotel guest’s laundry–there are smaller machines. The machinery includes washing machines from Belgium, ironer line from Denmark, dry-cleaning and garment finishing machines from Italy, garment pressing and dryers from USA, identification systems from Netherlands and packing systems from Germany.
Watching the machines in the process is an education. Once the washing is done; the laundered stuff—washed bed linen/table linen—is then put through a machine where a worker goes through it looking for any stains or damages before it is fed into a machine which will ‘finish’ the job.
If it is a bed sheet it comes out of the machine warm, ironed and folded—in satin finish. All that is left is packing and shipping. The unit can handle up to 15 tonnes daily. A point to note, according to Sreejith, is that none of the soiled linen is mixed – bed sheets are done separately, table linen separately and so on.
Magnamind has three divisions–Linen Lounge, Centralim and Allure.
Linen Lounge is for mainstream laundry services targeted to launder bed, bath, food and beverage, uniforms of hotel valets and corporate houses; banquet linen for conventions; bed and bath linens of railways and blankets and seat covers of airline companies.
Centralim will pioneer linen rentals, mainly to hotels. Allure, the company’s third division, offers dry cleaning services. In fact Allure has monthly laundry packages for small families.
Apart from institutional clients, Magnamind caters to semi-institutional and individual clients.
Seeing the processes is an eye-opener about how little one knows about one’s dry cleaning.
The finishes, the ‘forming’ of jackets and trousers (which is basically jetting steam into these to give them their shape), wire hangers (which according to Sreejith are best suited to shirts and jackets), shoulder guards for jackets (so that they don’t droop)…the world class works.
For more information
contact: 8589001175, 8589015155 or log on to www.magnamind.com
