Background
Royal Jersey is a small family-owned industrial laundry company based in Dagenham. They specialise in providing premium laundry services and dry cleaning for the hospitality sector. The laundry process includes the sorting, washing, drying and ironing of 40-45 tonnes of hotel linen, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The dry-cleaning service is located on the upper level of the factory, along with the industrial dryers and offices. The lower-level houses three industrial washer extractor machines, three tunnel washers and the four steam ironing machines. There is some available space on the lower level. Outside the main building, space is very limited.
The site uses high temperature steam (180C, 8 bar) generated from gas boilers which are housed in a separate building. The steam is transported from the boiler, through a heat network to deliver the heat to the various parts of the laundry process i.e. hot water for washing (55 degrees centigrade) and steam for ironing (180 degrees centigrade).
The work environment within the factory is particularly uncomfortable on the upper level during the summer months. The ventilation is via multiple extractor fans in the dry-cleaning area and windows in the office space. On the lower level there are several roller shutter doors (equipped with PVC strip curtains) which are open for most of the day allowing for cooler air and ventilation. Heating the building up is not a problem, cooling it is.
Most of the machinery within the factory is driven by high efficiency electric motors and Royal Jersey have installed solar PV on the roof. They do not currently monitor or manage the laundry process as a whole system.
Royal Jersey is in the process of installing;
Three heat exchangers to capture waste heat from the Ironers.
Two 5000ltr water storage tanks which will store the waste heat at 55 degrees and 40 degrees consecutively.
They have already installed variable speed compressors to upgrade the waste heat.
They are now looking for solutions which can further reduce the waste heat from the laundry process and address the cooling challenge at the site.
The challenge
Royal Jersey, in association with the Textile Service Association invites innovative solutions which can help them manage the thermal energy needs throughout their industrial laundry process within their premises in Dagenham, UK. This includes the washing, drying and ironing of the linens, as well as improving the thermal comfort for the staff working in the factory.
Royal Jersey are looking for solutions which:
- Further improve the efficiency of their gas boilers or offer potential replacements.
- Allow more efficient waste heat recovery and reuse of the captured waste heat in other parts of the industrial laundry process.
- Improve the working conditions for the staff through more efficient cooling of the upper floor, particularly in the office space.
- Treat the management of thermal energy in a holistic way.
Solutions could include, but are not limited to:
- Industrial heat pumps.
- Hydrogen adaptations or mix in the boilers.
- Waste heat recovery systems.
- HVAC, absorption chillers etc for cooling.
- Thermal energy management systems.
- Potential fuel switching particularly during night time operations.
- Heat Batteries.
- Solutions should be TRL 7 and be demonstrated within 6 months.
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Entrants to this competition must be established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs. Entrants must also be UK based or have the intention to set up a UK base.
Applications will be assessed on:
- Relevance to the defined challenge
- Benefit of implementation
- Feasibility/economic viability
- Innovative nature
- Ability to launch in line with expected timescales
- Credibility of applicant company
- Coherence of the proposed business model
- Development potential
- Suitability for the intended geographic market
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- Launch of the Competition: 31st October 2025
- Deadline for applications: 31st December 2025
- Selection and notification of finalists: 23rd January 2026
- Date of Pitch Day: wk beginning 9th February 2026
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The application form for this challenge will require applicants to provide company information and answer 3 questions – Idea Summary, Technology Readiness and Intellectual Property – each with a limit of 300 words.
Optionally, up to 3 supporting documents can be attached to the application. We recommend that supporting documents are limited to those which are directly relevant to the application. Please note that applications with no supporting document will not receive any penalty in assessment. Supporting documents which the Assessment Panel deems to be superfluous may be disregarded. Examples of useful additional documents include product images or short specification sheets, slide decks detailing the solution and/or company background, or solution case studies.
We recommend that you complete the application form in Google Chrome as other browsers may have compatibility issues. The application form does not need to be completed in one session and can be saved for future edits. Please ensure that you toggle “Stage Complete” for each section before submission. Note that you will no longer be able to edit your application once you have clicked “Submit Idea” at the bottom of the Summary page.