Why a Venturi Dispenser?

Tight margins are a way of life in the industrial laundry sector. Every investment decision you make has consequences. Your choice of chemical dispensing unit is no exception. Reliability is, no doubt, one of your key initial considerations. Factors that might affect reliability are often easy to identify; such as the likelihood of human errors arising from installation – or in regard to an ongoing maintenance requirement.

However, sometimes these factors might not be immediately obvious, regardless of your experience in the industry. Often there is a slow erosion of efficiency revealing itself in higher chemical costs, declines in production and a drop in cleaning quality that is only explicit much later. You cannot depend on a sustained period of downtime to give you any clear warning signals.

The cycle of complaint

The first time you might be aware of a specific problem is when you receive a call from an irate customer; who in turn is also responding to an equally angry complaint. Consider a customer who supplies linen to a top rated hotel. This luxury hotel will have a certain expectation of quality due to their position in the market. The laundry’s obligation is to meet that requirement. A failure to do so may be due to a poor mix of chemicals, or the inaccuracy of the dosing. Whatever the reason, when this quality expectation is unmet it creates a chain of complaint which will ultimately end at your door.

Your customer will feel aggrieved. Any blame will be directed at the chemicals and/or the dispensing unit you provide. Your reputation in the industry may suffer and as a result you hand your competitors an edge that can cut into your bottom line.

Fixing a problem inevitably involves a trip to your customer’s laundry site. However, aside from bearing this explicit financial cost, you will also have to weigh up the negative impact on the relationship you have with them. This is also likely to be mirrored in their subsequent relationship with the hotel. If the dispenser doesn’t live up to the promises you make this laundry might move to another chemical manufacturer.

Venturi vs peristaltic

Peristaltic tubes are at the core of most chemical dispensing units and the debates over the balance of cost and reliability. As peristaltic tubes get older, they wear, reducing the accuracy of the dosing. If the tubes aren’t being regularly changed this can affect the quality of the wash, with the negative impact on laundry customers that has already been described. In addition, customers putting in potentially less chemical than proposed, is also not in your interests.

Tubes have to be changed – depending on the amount of use – anywhere from between one and six months. Regularly travelling to customer’s sites to replace these tubes and recalibrate dispensers adds significantly to the lifetime costs of a unit, particularly when these customers are based in remoter locations.

The Venturi advantage

Hydro’s EvoClean chemical dispensing unit minimises or removes problems, other dispensing technologies fail to adequately address, from the equation – saving time, money and downtime. The EvoClean carries out the same function as a peristaltic pump but in a completely different and more reliable way.

The EvoClean is calibrated using concise programming, which allows it to introduce the correct amount of chemical to the laundry machine during wash cycles. Hydro’s Venturi technology guarantees unparalleled accuracy, meaning the right amount of chemical is mixed every time – ensuring cleaning performance is maximised. Automated dosing and dispensing removes the opportunity for human error and can optimise the use of chemicals at the most efficient boundaries of their application. The device doesn’t require external, batteries, pumps, or air and instead runs off the ordinary water pressure and electricity supply, available in most buildings; it also has no moving parts.

From cost to efficiency

Laundries can get comfortable with the use of their existing dispensing technology. As a result it is easy for them to justify the status quo by over-emphasising the immediate up-front costs of a Venturi unit. This is an understandable emphasis in a sector of small margins. The increase in up-front costs is significant but it is by no means prohibitive. Where the differential is keenest felt is the saving over the course of a Venturi unit’s lifetime. This can effectively halve the cost as compared to peristaltic technology.

We don’t just sell dispensers in isolation. A linked process of education and modernisation are a key element of the differential we offer to the market. This involves training and supporting every level of a customer’s business through this important change in their dispensing technology. Customers can confidently rely on the accuracy of the dosing, and this is reinforced by the importance we place on testing.

A Venturi unit is effectively customised to order. A prospective customer can send us the chemicals they want to put through their dispenser and we will do some accelerated life tests. From this step we either create, or offer them a system matched to their chemical design. We also back this up through providing unit trials.

We show precisely what the costs are, the total lifetime value of the unit, and the returns on investment. With the success of this total approach, Hydro is driving confidence in the superiority of Venturi-based dispensers while opening up the benefits of this technology to all levels of the industry.