European Cleaning Solvent, Ktex by Bardahl, now available in the US and Canada for the first time, exclusively available through Street/Adco/Laidlaw
Mountain Spring Cleaners, in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada is the first cleaner in North America to install Ktex by Bardahl, a new professional textile cleaning solvent that has seen rapid growth outside North America.
A Realstar machine was successfully converted to Ktex at Mountain Spring Cleaners, which is located in Alberta’s oil country. In addition to regular retail work, a significant proportion of what Spring Cleaners processes are heavily soiled oil-drilling work coveralls. According to owner, Sharon Strickland, “Ktex does a great job of cleaning and with a much lower over-all processing time. Our efficiency has increased dramatically. It was a real eye opener to have that time added back into the day.”
Since taking over Mountain Spring Cleaners, Sharon has invested in replacing over eighty percent of their equipment. “Our goal is to be on the leading edge of technology, to be an industry leader, to be a more efficient operation and to provide our customers with a better end product. The switch to Ktex certainly does that, ” Notes Sharon, “We had customer odor complaints, especially with the heavy coveralls; we even lost customers because of odor. With Ktex we have had zero complaints.”
Ktex solvent was developed in Europe through a cooperative effort between Bardahl Manufacturing Corporation, one of the world’s leading manufacturer of automotive fuel additives, lubricants and cleaning products, and Finanziaria Macchine Bolognese SPA (FMB Group) one of the world’s leading manufacturers of dry cleaning machines, including Firbimatic, Realstar and Union brand machines.
Bardahl has been a leader in the additive and chemical industry for more than 75 years. Its products are sold today in more than 90 countries worldwide. Bardahl is famous for sponsoring motorsports teams, which have competed around the world since 1939, including Daytona and Indy 500. Bardahl currently is a lead sponsor of Sébastien Loeb Racing (SLR), among other prominent racing teams. Bardahl reports that its decades of experience in cutting edge development, technology and manufacturing led it to a natural expansion into the textile cleaning industry.
According to Bardahl, Ktex “offers a system which cleans better, is efficient and costs less to use.” The solvent, commercially introduced about two years ago in France, is currently used in more than 60 plants in France, and numerous plants around the world, but has not been available in the Canada or the US until now. A non-halogenated cleaning solvent, Ktex is approved for use only in FMB’s Firbimatic, Realstar and Union drycleaning machines and is a drop in solvent for all these brands of modern Class IIIA dry cleaning machines.
Ktex cleaning solvent is available in the United States and Canada exclusively through the Industrial Division of the Street, Adco, Laidlaw Companies with both central and local technical support.
