Maggie Philbin & BBC Radio Berkshire spend the morning at White Knight's Reading Laundry

Monday, October 24, 2011

The sun had not even risen on Wednesday 19 October when the BBC Radio Berkshire crew arrived at White Knight's Reading laundry for one of a series of programmes looking at what some people are doing whilst the rest of the county is sleeping or just waking up.

BBC Radio Berkshire presenter, Maggie Philbin spent the morning at White Knight's Reading laundry and interviews with staff were broadcast live every half an hour during the Breakfast Show hosted by Andrew Peach.

White Knight was founded in 1904 and Peter Tomlins, Chairman and grandson of White Knight's founder was asked what keeps a family business going for over a century. He suggested that, in this case, it is the fact that each generation has been involved in the company giving it continuity and stability and even today his son, James, sits on the Board of Directors.

Following a cup of coffee Andy Marsh, Special Projects Manager, showed Maggie around the laundry. Andy has been instrumental in equipping the Reading site to re-open as a fully functioning laundry in 2010 and talked Maggie through the laundry process from start to finish. She then went on to meet Engineer Richard Bucksey whose role it is to ensure that the equipment is fully functioning at all times, and White Knight's new apprentice engineer, 16 year old Jack Taylor. Maggie is passionate about getting young people interested in practical careers and is founder of TeenTech which promotes engineering, science and technology to schoolchildren with events across the country. Jack said that he had grown up considerably since he began his apprenticeship in September.

Staff tend to stay with White Knight and Maggie next met Alex Brontu who had worked his way up from a machine operator to Engineer at White Knight's London site to now being Operations Manager at Reading. The reason he has stayed so long? The people. Julie Hill agreed. She had been made redundant when the laundry closed in 2002, but as soon as she learnt that it was re-opening immediately applied to return. Julie is now Supervisor of the Packing Section.

Penny Geeves, Procurement Manager, purchases all the linen which White Knight's commercial customers rent as part of their laundry service. She explained that every item was discreetly labelled with a customer's unique account number so that it can be identified and returned to that customer after laundering. Finally Jane Jones, Marketing Manager, answered that all important question. How to avoid losing socks in the wash? Simple – use White Knight's door2door domestic laundry service, where each item is labelled and paired up at the end of the process. White Knight collects and delivers to the homes or workplaces of around 4,000 domestic customers whose laundry and dry cleaning is processed at the Woking site. Some will send their bedlinen every week, while others will simply call when they need a service. The Woking laundry can process all types of household linen and frequently cleans anything from horse rugs to wedding dresses.