“People don’t purchase photocopiers, cars, or any cash equipment anymore. It’s all coming down to rental.” Matt Gellie, Head of Rental at Kärcher

As well as being an economic advantage, hiring or leasing cleaning equipment is a strategy for mitigating downtime. In an exclusive interview with Matt Gellie, Head of Rental at Kärcher, MEPCA learns how flexibility in equipment procurement can empower industrial hygiene and cleaning.

Kärcher is a leading manufacturer of cleaning equipment, headquartered in Winnenden, Baden-Württemberg. Many of our readers will be familiar with the company, if not by name, then by the striking yellow of its trusted cleaning products, which form the backbone of many industrial hygiene and cleaning regimes.

Our editor Oliver Batt recently had the opportunity to speak with Matt Gellie, Head of Rental at Kärcher, to discuss the growing trend of equipment hire and leasing.

Matt explained that Kärcher Hire was originally called Clean Sweep, which Kärcher purchased in 2015, and Kärcher saw a growth in the rental market at the time. “Since then,” he said, “we’ve been seeing double digit growth year on year.” It is now worth over £9 million, and this is an upwards trend.

Kärcher Hire has seen machine rental grow in markets that weren’t traditionally strong. Whereas this would be expected in facilities management, with its emphasis on contractual arrangements, there is now a growth in councils, public services, and in manufacturing and industrial sectors.

“People don’t purchase photocopiers, cars, or any cash equipment anymore. It’s all coming down to rental […] Being able to rent a machine where you’ve got fixed costs – you know it’s going to cost you X amount a month for the period you take that machine – helps them to balance their books. And I think that’s given people peace of mind and why rental has become a lot more popular.”

Expanding on the reasons driving this trend, Matt said that flexibility was a major factor, something which Kärcher excels at. Taking the company’s long-term and short-term rentals (from 2 days up to 5 years) as an example, should a business have a refurbishment that changes its requirements during the agreement, rather than being stuck with a now unsuitable machine, a business can change the model or increase the equipment they have, enabling greater adaptability.

Flexibility in technology and contract are just one dimension of this, however, and Kärcher is also committed to the mantra, “Always keep you cleaning,” by guaranteeing an engineer within 24 hours should a machine fail, and a replacement machine within 48 hours if required.

When asked whether there was relation between the cost and perceived complexity of a machine and the likelihood of a business renting rather purchasing it, Matt explained that, while they see rental across all sizes and complexity of machines, there was certainly growing trend with robotics and larger road sweepers. When it comes to the former, in addition to cost management, a further benefit is always having the most up-to-date technology: if there’s an upgrade, customers are able swap what they have for the newest technology.

R&D is a big part of the company’s culture. While Matt isn’t involved in that side of the business, which is undertaken in Germany, he provided an insight into Kärcher’s current R&D drivers, which include battery powered machines for greater flexibility, and, of course, robotics.

Thanks to advances in Kärcher’s supporting software platform, its KIRA robotics products are becoming ever more sophisticated and increasingly autonomous, able to communicate and harmonise with other robotic systems, giving priority to, say, picking machines, or other crucial operational systems, which are more paramount for maintaining productivity.

“the machines also go into their own docking station as well. So, they’re able to fill, empty and charge themselves, making it fully autonomous rather than co-botic.” As a caveat to this, he added that human oversight was still important, but most of the process can be automated.

Safety is crucial in any industrial cleaning application, but particularly with automated and robotic technology. Addressing the topic, Matt explained that the KIRA robotics products have been independently certified for safe use, even in public (IEC 63327) and have cliff detection technology; “because of the lidar sensors the machine has got, it’s able to detect any drop.”

Further Illustrating how a provider such as Kärcher’s can help mitigate production downtime, Matt recalled a real-world scenario that befell one of their customers:

“There was an instance last year where there was flash flooding at a large factory in Manchester overnight and they needed to get equipment very quickly. We got a call early in the morning. We then had to react to get the scrubber dryers on site to be able to clear up from this flood so that production was able to continue” […] “I think we had the call at about seven o’clock in the morning, and we’d got multiple machines on the site by half-past 9.”

For manufacturers considering renting cleaning equipment, Matt insisted that there isn’t a universal solution, with site layouts and technological requirements varying greatly between even comparable manufacturers.

He recommended that manufacturers find a provider that they can work closely with, which will get equipment to them quickly, and understand the site and what the business needs.

karcherhire.co.uk