Sustainability and Dependability; key aspects that led to A&M Elis (Ardennes and Meuse) to choose Mattei compressors for their business. A&M is an industrial laundry specialist, operating since the 1950s in the textile care labelling sector. Later, with the rise of the hotels sector in Belgium in the 1990s, they decided to switch focus to HORECA and since then, based out of the Hauts-Sarts area since 2009, A&M Elis has risen to become a key player in laundry and fabric care for the hotels and restaurants sector.
A key aspect for the Belgian company is maintaining a strong focus on the environment, which has led management to invest in energy efficient machines in order to handle laundry loads of up to 160 tonnes per week.
“The first Mattei compressor we bought was an ERC1022, dating back to 1996,” explains Marc Broers, Production Center Director of A&M, “It is a machine that fully represents Mattei’s reliability as a quarter of a century later it is still running as a backup for our most recent compressor purchases; an Optima 30 bought in 2011 and an AC45 from 2014, both of which are equipped with the heat recovery system giving us an even more efficient operation”.
It is this focus on sustainability and the environment that brough AF Belgium and A&M into the sights of Energy Crew, a web-based platform that provides training services to help managers and their companies improve their machines and processes in order to save energy.
“Energy Crew approached us to help them create a training course on energy recovery in compressors”, explains Laurent Teughels, Sales Manager at AF Belgium, “starting with A&M, who reuse the heat from compressing air to pre-heat water before it enters the boiler. In this way they manage to save an average of 60kWh, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, equating to 156,000kWh a year”. In Belgium 1kWh of electricity “costs” about 220g of CO2 emissions, meaning that thanks to the improved efficiency of its operating processes, A&M “saves” the environment from more than 34 tonnes of additional CO2 every year.
There’s another exceptional result linked to the performance of Mattei: “The advantages of using Mattei compressors in this case are actually two-fold”, continues the Sales Manager of AF Belgium. “On the one hand, you’ve got their durability and reliability, and then the energy efficiency associated with rotary vane technology, which guarantees a tighter air seal and above all consistent and long-lasting performance. It’s the most efficient solution that is able to meet all the needs of an extremely diverse client base”.
That is why the collaboration between Mattei & AF Belgium is only destined to keep on growing. “Mattei technology is extremely competitive in terms of reliability and the focus on energy saving”, reiterates Laurent Teughels of AF, “two factors that bring considerable advantages to those who choose it, and we are very happy to have such satisfied customers."
From Issue 18, Vane Magazine, October 2021