Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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67,742 litres of sanitiser, 300,000 disposable gloves & over 280 workplace deep cleans: the story of one cleaning company's pandemic experience
It's been 12 months since the outbreak of Covid-19 and cleaning companies all over the world are still operating at maximum capacity, ensuring that key workers have safe and hygienic offices, factories, schools and medical facilities in which to operate.
Lightowler, the Hull-based cleaning, painting and facilities management firm, has been operating for over 160 years but a pandemic presented a unique new set of challenges the team had never experienced.
"It seems such a long time ago since we first heard the whispers of the mysterious Covid-19 and in late February 2020, we started to realise it was going to affect our business - and our customers' businesses,” notes Vicky Roberts, commercial director at Lightowler.
"Our customers started to reach out, asking us to provide additional cleaning services for the safety of their staff - predominantly the sanitisation of touchpoints, along with bucketfuls of hand sanitisers and masks.
"We recognised that we needed an efficient and effective system of sanitising premises. Many of our customers are in the essential worker category, so it was important to continue to keep their businesses operational and their staff safe. With research undertaken and orders placed, our new ‘Electrostatic Sanitisation Equipment’ arrived from the US just in time before the March lockdown.
"We set to work offering this service to our customers and have found many new ones along the way. To say this service has gone down well is an understatement. We've been able to do our part by helping to keep factories going, medicines being made, essential business operating, footballs kicking, council vehicles running and builders building.
"I also have to give absolute praise to our workforce, many of them have gone above and beyond to keep our customers premises extra clean. They have worked extra hours, changed their shift patters and generally been absolutely amazing. Also praise goes to our office staff and managers who worked many a weekend and late night to keep us fully operational."
12 months in numbers:
* 67,742 litres of sanitiser
* 300,000 disposable gloves
* Over 280 deep cleans
* 784 electrostatic sanitisations
* 14,000 masks
* 72 floors stripped and sealed
25th February 2021