Girbau Washer Saves the Day at RNLI’s Busiest Lifeboat Station

Girbau UK has donated one of its HS-6008 high speed washers to the RNLI’s Tower Lifeboat Station, the busiest in the country. The new washer is perfect for coping with the station’s large volume of laundry that needs cleaning on a daily basis and crucially provides reliable high-temperature disinfection as well.

“Tower Lifeboat in central London is the busiest station in the RNLI and is manned 24/7 with a crew and boat ready to launch in 90 seconds,” says Keith Cima, RNLI Thames Helmsman. “The laundry throughput for both crew and casualties is prodigious, and needs high temperature to deal with river water and other contamination and a robust reliable machine. The donation of a machine from Girbau has revolutionised our laundry arrangements and is massively appreciated by all the crew.”

Based next to Waterloo Bridge the lifeboat station saves lives and responds to emergencies between Woolwich Ferry and Battersea Bridge, nearly 14 miles of River Thames. The station has had over 6,000 call outs since 2002 and saved more than 275 lives. It rescues hundreds from the river each yearusing its 10.5m E-class Mk 2 In-shore Lifeboat with 850HP of twin-jet drive and a speed of 45 knots, the fastest craft plying the river. The station operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the year with two full-time and two volunteer crew on every 12-hour shift.

The station’s washer was in constant use cleaning the large heavy-duty towels and blankets used to dry and warm people pulled from the water. It is also used to wash the crew’s underlayers and thermals. Previously the crew had been using a domestic machine, but this could neither cope with the volume and intensity of use, nor provide the required high temperature disinfection.

Girbau UK donated one of its commercial HS-6008 washers to the station in response to an appeal by Stuart Boyd, the Master of the Worshipful Company of Launderers. Stuart has chosen the RNLI Tower Lifeboat station as the charity the Company will support in his year as Master.

“When we heard about the tireless work of the RNLI’s Tower Lifeboat station, we were only too pleased to be able to offer our support in the form of a Girbau HS-6008 washer,” says Peter Marsh, Managing Director of Girbau UK.

The 9kg capacity high spin washer has been top-rated for energy efficiency by US body Energy Star. Like all Girbau machines it is very robustly built to ensure years of continuous use with minimal routine maintenance. Among its many wash programs for different materials and types of washing are high temperature disinfection programs needed for healthcare applications. Its intuitive controls also make the machine very easy to use.

For more information, visit:http://www.girbau.co.uk