By Daniel Karrholt, CEO, Swedish Textile Service Association
This year’s Swedish Textile Service Association’s autumn meeting was held in one of our most expansive municipalities – Nacka in the Stockholm area. For many, autumn is our most beautiful season and in scenic Nacka it is hard to say no. In total, about 130 participants joined. The autumn meeting has special value through industry exhibitions, which attracted approximately 35 member companies.
It is tradition to be welcomed by one of the meeting city’s municipal councilors. This time we had the pleasure of hearing Agnes Palinski, municipal councilor and 1 Vice-Chairman of the Environment and Urban Planning Committee and member of the municipal council in Nacka.
The microphone was then handed to Cyprian Ong’au Morang’a, site manager for MoveByBike in Stockholm, a leading logistics player for Citysmart last mile. The logistics solution of the future – environmentally friendly and cycle-borne.
Yvonne Augustsson, from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency was then welcomed. She focused on three pieces of legislation which will affect the members of Tvätteriförbundet. Two pieces of legislation were discussed: Ecodesign for sustainable products and separate collection of textiles from other waste. Additionally, there was a status update on ongoing negotiations regarding possible producer responsibility.
Michael Bo Jensen, a leading expert at our supplier member Alumichem, has implemented solutions for industrial laundries and continues to do so. More recently, he has worked with sludge solutions for land-based fish farming facilities, so-called Recirculating Aquaculture Systems.
Roos Mulder, spoke about Texscale. The project’s main goal is to increase the resource-efficient use of textiles by bridging the gap between nonwoven production on a pilot and industrial scale, optimizing logistics and increasing the knowledge and ability within the industry to convert to a circular economy.
Attendees then enjoyed a fantastic three-quarters with Allan Larsson, Former Minister of Finance and Director General. This year, he published “Memory pictures – Instead of Memoirs” where he describes in pictures and a short text, fifty-one events from his childhood and a long life in public activities.
After lunch there was a presentation by Simone Fuchs, Head of Legal & Sustainability @Eniro, who spoke about the company’s journey of change – from the yellow catalogue to today’s innovative customer-focused company.
The day ended with Jan Nicolay, Head of Business Development, sewts, self-described as a company that is: “accelerating the development of agile robotics perfectly tailored to bridge automation gaps in the textile service industry. Our brain-in-a-box approach to building advanced robotics spins out intricate and new use cases, positioning sewts as the go-to company to address complex automation tasks in the future.”
Chairman Michael Sandin then thanked everyone for a successful day and gave special thanks to partners of the autumn meeting – Texcare, Alumichem, Dibella, Maxi-Press, Beirholm, Floringo and ABS Laundry Business Solutions.
Image Top Right: L to R: Matilda Boström and Robert Tye from ABS and Daniel Karrholt
