Celtic Linen awarded ‘Excellence in providing laundry service across Healthcare Sector’

Celtic Linen services its hospitality and healthcare customers through its three ultra-modern processing plants. With some 270 staff, the company can deliver an impressive 1 million pieces of clean linen every week. The largest linen supplier to the Irish Healthcare Market, Celtic Linen delivers scrubs and flat linen throughout the country, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Current CEO Joanne Somers is the first to admit that growth and, more importantly, success in the service industry is dependent on people. “The team we have working with us are just fantastic and have worked and fought to keep our service going during these almost impossible times. The success of the company thus far is in no small part down to our staff.” Joanne explains.

The public sector is hugely important to Celtic Linen, with more than 50% of its current turnover coming from this sector. It is also the fastest-growing sector within the company due in no small part to the Covid19 crisis and the increased demand for scrub suits and other PPE. Celtic’s main public sector customers are hospitals and care facilities that come under the auspices of the HSE.

During the Covid19 crisis, the laundry services to Irish hospitals has taken on a critical role. Whilst laundry up to now has always been a low involvement product for buyers; its current daily indispensability has now propelled it to an essential service for healthcare institutions. “Just imagine if we told the HSE, ‘sorry we can’t reach on your orders today”, no sheets, no scrubs, no operations! It will never happen,” says Joanne.

Not a company to rest on its laurels, Celtic has recently been accredited by the NSAI to produce healthcare in its second plant under the stringent RABC EN14065 standard. This will add considerable flexibility to the company, giving it substantial increases in production capacity in the coming years. The RABC standard is a required and essential standard for linen suppliers to Irish hospitals. It is also a nod to the future growth plans and direction this progressive company intends to take.

“For Celtic to win the public sector magazine award at this time is a testament not only to our great staff but also the public sector’s recognition that we are battling this as a team, whether we be supplier or buyer we need to work together,” Joanne adds.

Celtic Linen believes there is great potential for its services in both the hospitality and health sectors, and the company has manoeuvred into a position to realise that potential fully.