Series: Your Allied Trades Team

Lavatec is a leading provider of laundry equipment and machinery. The company operates its main production facility at a central site in Germany and has subsidiaries in France, Italy, and the USA.

Jim Shaw
Vice President and
National Account Sales Manager
Website: https://www.lavatec.com

Besides the obvious service of selling equipment and other goods, what does your company offer to its customers to help with their business?

The two things our customers rate highly is our engineering plant design and service capabilities. We offer custom plant layout designs that help improve your workflow, reduce labor time and costs, and lower your installation costs.

For example, one of our customers has saved 40,000 gallons of water a day for over three years since replacing their old tunnel washing system with a Lavatec machine. It also reduced their operating time and improved their plant production efficiency up to 30%, in addition to reducing utilities costs. Our designs can also assist your contractors.

Our service technicians have years of experience to assist with maintenance education, troubleshooting, and on-site service seminars. We visit with and help our customers by training their maintenance crew and operators, and when needed, they know we can help at any hour of the day. We also have an online Parts website where you can order and often receive them within 24 hours.

Give some examples of situations where you were able to help a plant because of your staff’s expertise.

When we provide a utility analysis, we project an anticipated ROI and offer supporting documentation to help our customers secure utility rebates, grants, and financing. We have developed a simple spreadsheet where the customer can complete a few simple questions that will determine their approximate ROI.

We have also participated with customers to attain rebates and refunds throughout the United States by providing the anticipated utility usage of the new Lavatec systems, in comparison to their current process.

Why do plant owners don’t think to call your company when they are having an issue you are able to help with?

I believe that after being in business for over four decades, most customers do call us. For the minority who do not, they may simply be unaware or have forgotten of the capabilities we can assist them with, or they may have internal staff work on a resolution.

What else do you wish you could tell your customers to help them fully utilize your services?

We have the luxury of working on many plant designs and services, which makes us available for assistance with the production needs or utility analysis for any size facility. Lavatec equipment is built to stand the test of time, and many of our machines are still performing at a high level after 25 or 30 years. Over 8,000 of them have been installed in the United States alone, and more throughout Canada. Laundry operators looking for an edge and greater efficiency know they can improve their laundry operations with Lavatec equipment.

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