Bright Little Stars Nursery chooses Miele’s new Little Giants to wash away a busy day of play
With up to ninety children attending the nursery daily, this busy environment easily gets through several loads of dirty laundry every day. From paint, mud and food stains on children’s clothing to fresh bedding for those all-important naptimes, Bright Little Stars needed a quality laundry solution to complement its business requirements and to help maintain its high standards of care.
Due to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the nursery found that laundry items such as bedding, towels and clothes needed to be washed and dried more frequently to avoid the risks associated with cross contamination and infection as well as to ensure compliance with National Care Standards for Early Education and Childcare.
For Bright Little Stars, the combination of a fast laundry turnaround, excellent hygiene standards and a quality clean, is essential to the smooth running of the nursery. However, its previous domestic laundry equipment, could not cope with the speeds required of cycle times. Drying times were limited to three loads per day and employees often found that laundry was still damp after its cycle which can accelerate the spread of bacteria.
Looking to replace its laundry equipment, Bright Little Stars needed a small but powerful solution that could conveniently fit within a compact on-premise laundry room. After hearing about the launch of the new range of Little Giants by Miele Professional, Bright Little Stars contacted Miele partner, GW Commercial, to replace its domestic equipment.
GW Commercial installed the Little Giants PERFORMANCE washer and dryer, which has a footprint of less than 1m² when stacked. With a load capacity of 7kg, the PWM507 drain pump washer delivers short cycle times of less than 60 minutes and consumes low levels of energy and water. It has also been built to minimise infection, offering users hygiene reassurance with its multiple disinfection programmes. Unlike domestic machines, Miele’s professional washing machines are WRAS (Water Regulations Advisory Scheme) category 5 approved; an important requirement that washers in a nursery environment need to comply to. The PDR507 heat pump dryer was also selected due to its fast turnaround times, with cycles lasting around 79 minutes. Miele’s patented honeycomb drum provides gentle laundry care while its PerfectDry system ensures excellent drying results.
Bright Little Stars experienced results straight away with the new range of Little Giants. Washing times decreased by 10% to just under one hour, with laundry such as bedding and towels coming out hygienically clean. However, drying times experienced the most significant area of improvement with cycle times reduced from 2-3 hours to approximately 1 hours and 30 minutes. This has enabled the nursery to maintain a high standard of care by ensuring children have crisp and dry bedding every day.
Amol Devani CEO said: “We needed laundry equipment that could fit into a small space, required minimal maintenance and could handle the busy every day running of the nursery – and, we’re delighted to say that the Little Giants range ticks all of these boxes. The Miele brand symbolises quality, efficiency and reliability, which made it the perfect choice for our laundry equipment.
GW Commercial has provided an excellent service and the install itself went seamlessly. Engineers provided our nursery manager with the training needed to operate the machine on a daily basis, and this training can now be rolled out to our employees. They explained everything from the fault-finding procedure to the monthly cleaning process, which enables the equipment to be maintained effectively.
Our laundry throughput has increased to five loads per days, whereas before we were struggling to process three cycles. These fast turnaround times have helped reassure us that we can continue to offer high standards of early years care, which is especially important in a post-Covid-19 environment.”
