BURLINGTON, ON (January 12, 2024) – Mohawk Medbuy Corporation (MMC) is pleased to announce the sale of its Linen Services division to Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service, a family- owned leader in the health care linens service business in Canada and the United States. The sale follows a competitive process facilitated by a third-party and conducted in collaboration with MMC Members. The outcome meets the criteria Mohawk Medbuy established at the outset to ensure continued employment for its Hamilton-based employees and long-term service commitments to the hospitals and other customers it supports. Divesting its linens business will allow MMC to focus on its growing, national health care supply chain services.

“Mohawk Medbuy has a 50-year legacy of providing quality Linens Services and we’re very proud of our team,” said Peter Longo, MMC’s Chief Operating Officer. “Ecotex is extremely well equipped to build on the dedicated service we’ve provided – and is bringing new investments in equipment to the Hamilton plant. It’s a very positive next step for our Linens staff, our Member hospitals and customers – and the City of Hamilton.”
Ecotex provides health care laundry services using its large regional linen reprocessing facilities. Their use of environmentally friendly practices has earned the company a Clean Green certification. “We’re thrilled that MMC and their hospitals selected Ecotex based on the value, quality and savings we offer,” said Ecotex President and CEO, Bryan Bartsch. “We look forward to having the 200+ person team in Hamilton become part of the Ecotex family and to delivering our high standard of service to our new customers. To ensure that, we’re making infrastructure investments to the Hamilton facility this year, including a new Tunnel Washer, Press, Shuttle & Dryer System.”

For hospitals currently served by MMC, Ecotex brings a new level of scale and resources. Based on the company’s expertise and strong track record within health care, the selection of Ecotex was firmly endorsed by all the hospitals currently served by MMC’s linen operations. “This is a very good outcome for our patients, our hospital, and our community,” said John Aldis, Senior Vice President, Finance and Corporate Services at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. “It reflects the effort MMC undertook to engage Member hospitals through the process, align on key objectives, and find the best match in a partner that really understands and can meet our evolving linen service needs into the future.”

The selection of Ecotex was the right decision, according to Paul Truscott Jr., Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Health Sciences North (HSN). “Linens are essential to patient care. The scale, resources and operational redundancy that Ecotex brings to the table gives us great confidence that they will deliver for our hospital. Equally important, they’re able to provide cost savings in the process. That’s a win-win for HSN.”

Mohawk Medbuy and Ecotex are currently implementing the transition phase to ensure a seamless service handoff on February 29, 2024.

About Mohawk Medbuy

Mohawk Medbuy Corporation (MMC) is a national, not-for-profit, shared services organization that supports hundreds of health care providers across Canada, as well as child welfare agencies and otherpublic sector organizations. MMC provides value-driven contracting and procurement solutions formedical/surgical supplies, pharmaceutical products, local sourcing, capital (equipment, FF&E and redevelopment) and nutrition solutions. Other services include data analytics, in-hospital support, warehousing/logistics, technology, procure-to-pay, accounts payable and linens.

MMC is actively supporting the creation of a resilient value chain that incorporates environmental social, and economic wellbeing and fosters the participation of Indigenous businesses. Based in Burlington, ON, MMC operates regional hubs in Toronto, Thunder Bay, Kingston, Brantford and London, a distribution centre in Oakville and a linens facility in Hamilton.

About Ecotex

Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service (Ecotex) is family owned and operated company founded in 1959. Over the past 65 years the company has evolved and grown. Ecotex provides Smarter Linen Solutions™ andpartners with large regional healthcare customers. Ecotex has an exclusive focus on the healthcare market, our focused approach has propelled our expansion and healthcare subject matter expertise.Ecotex supports both urban and rural healthcare facilities, ranging from hospitals to long-term care centers. The Ecotex team is comprised of 1,700 employees producing millions of hygienically clean hospital linens each year.

TORONTO, CANADA (December 23, 2023) — Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service was referenced as a healthcare leader in research led by the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, and released on December 23, 2023, titled “A Circular Economy Model for Hospital-Generated PPE and Medical Single-Use Plastic Waste: Demonstrating Opportunities for Reduction and Reuse,”and funded by Government of Canada through Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), explored the many synergies with other government and health-system priorities that would enhance opportunities and support for a reusable personal protective equipment, or PPE system.

Timely access to PPE was reported by numerous Canadian hospitals as the primary motivator to secure reusable PPE such as reusable gowns.

“Converting to reusable gowns with Ecotex immediately introduced a predictable supply of product for the foreseeable future,” said Altaf Stationwala, CEO, Mackenzie Health, Ontario, a hospital that receives laundry, linen services and reusable PPE from Ecotex. “The fact that it also reduced our environmental footprint was an added benefit. Mackenzie Health has now converted all of the isolation gowns used in the ICU to reusables.”

This thought was echoed by project partner University Health Network (UHN), a major, multi-hospital health system in Ontario that receives laundry, linen services and reusable PPE from Ecotex. According to Joanne Bridle, executive director, FM-PRO operations, UHN, “Early in the pandemic, UHN and Ecotex, our healthcare linen services partner, collaborated on the development of a high-volume reusable isolation gown program. This process was quickly scalable, enabling Ecotex to launder and return clean reusable isolation gowns up to three times a day during the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic, when reusable isolation gown use had more than tripled to 120,000 gowns per week. Through this creative and sustainable local initiative, Team UHN was consistently provided with high-quality reusable isolation gowns to continue caring for patients safely during this very challenging time. Today, over 99% of the isolation gowns used at UHN are reusable.”

Cost savings were also reported by hospitals using reusable gowns. For example, UHN reported significant cost savings where reusable isolation gowns were 60% of the cost of disposables, and Toronto-area hospitals that used reusable isolation gowns saved an estimated $70-million dollars over the first two years of the pandemic.

“Healthcare laundry processing facilities are critically important support infrastructure and were invaluable in ensuring that Canadian healthcare workers had IPAC-approved, reusable PPE barrier gowns throughout the COVID pandemic and beyond,” said Randy Bartsch, executive chairman of Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service, and the incoming chair of TRSA. Our TRSA members process more than 80% of all the healthcare laundry at hospitals in Canada and are key suppliers of reusable PPE gowns and other protective medical garments and textiles.”

For more information, visit the Coalition’s project webpage at https://greenhealthcare.ca/ppe-msup/

ABOUT ECOTEX

Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service is a leading provider of contracted healthcare laundry and linen services to hospitals, sub-acute and medical facilities in the United States and Canada. Ecotex provides a comprehensive range of general linen and operating room linen processing, management and distribution services to large hospitals, medical clinics, and other commercial accounts. Ecotex is a privately held corporation with offices in Seattle, Toronto, and Vancouver, and has over 1000 employees. For more information, please visit www.SmarterLinenSolutions.com.

Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, recently announced that Bryan Bartsch, who has served as the president of the Ecotex Group since 2018, will succeed his father, Randy Bartsch, as the company’s next CEO, effective Jan. 1, 2024. He will become the third generation of the Bartsch family to lead the business.

Randy Bartsch will continue to support the company as the executive chair of the Ecotex Service Group. This transition aligns with Ecotex’s long-term plan and growth strategy. “With Bryan at the helm, we ensure management continuity and maintain our strong generational outlook,” said Randy Bartsch, the executive chairman of Ecotex. “Our commitment to developing and strengthening our leadership team positions Ecotex to continue to execute solutions for our customers and capitalize on growth opportunities as they arise.”

A graduate of Washington State University, Bryan Bartsch joined the family business in 2002, working his way up from the plant floor before assuming his current role as president in 2018. He is a graduate of the TRSA Production Management Institute (PMI) and has earned the designation of a Certified Professional Laundry Manager (CPLM). Bartsch is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and is on the Board of ARTA, the American Reusable Textile Association.

Ecotex operates 10 specialized healthcare linen processing facilities, providing laundry, linen services and reusable personal protective equipment (PPE) to more than 400 health systems, hospitals and subacute medical facilities in Canada and the Midwest, Southwest and Pacific Regions of the United States. For more information about Ecotex, visit smarterlinensolutions.com.

Ecotex is pleased to announce the grand opening of the newest Ecotex facility, which serves as a regional distribution hub for the healthcare laundry in the region.

Our team worked on this project from its original design, through to the buildout phase. Today we have a beautiful new building for our team!

Ecotex provides hygienically clean healthcare linen for over one million patients each week.

VANCOUVER, CANADA (March 9, 2020) — The new Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service (“Ecotex”),  linen processing facility in Kelowna, British Columbia was awarded as one of the “Best Laundry Plants of the Year in North America” by Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA), the industry’s international trade association. Annually TRSA awards its Best Plants of the Year award acknowledging laundry environmental sustainability, quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Over a span of 12 months, Ecotex built a new, modern healthcare laundry processing facility in Kelowna, B.C., Canada. At 35,000-square-feet, the facility processes 18 million pounds of certified Hygienically Clean^® linens a year, serving more than 80 hospitals, clinics and healthcare clients.  The facility has seen an 80 percent gain in productivity over the past three years, since opening in 2017.

“The plant which we built in Kelowna is a result of things we’ve learned from others in the industry over many years, as well as our own experience operating a number of plants in different markets in the United States and Canada,” observed Bryan Bartsch, company president, adding, “we were able to take the best practices from others, as well as apply things we’ve learned and implement a super-efficient plant.”

The Ecotex facility’s largest investments have been in automated wash systems, energy recovery systems, and control technologies. The company’s proprietary linen transport and distribution cart program allows a new “no fold” handling approach on some textile items that would have previously been folded, increasing productivity, and saving the clients’ money. The plant’s approach to of “pre-building” orders six hours in advance of shipment created a standard work model that has decreased time expressing goods through the plant to fill orders “just in time.” As a result, Ecotex has achieves a 99% order fill rate within a 24-hour process cycle. Ecotex uses a cloud based linen management system, a SaaS system known as ELM^TM software, which supports the delivery of smarter linen solutions for customers including enhanced linen utilization, service standardization and bed makeup programs. Ecotex owns and operates laundries serving healthcare clients in two provinces (British Columbia, Ontario) and eight states (Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, West Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois).

“It’s a real honour to be recognized alongside for the innovations and new levels of plant performance we have each accomplished,” said Ecotex Chief Executive, Randy Bartsch.

The Best Plants accolade, part of TRSA’s Leadership Awards series, will be presented March 25, 2020 at the TRSA 10^th Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC.  Other member organizations to be honored that evening include winners of TRSA’s awards for community and customer service, diversity recognition, safety and sustainability. For more about the TRSA 10th Annual Legislative Conference, visit www.trsa.org/legcon.

ABOUT TRSA

TRSA (www.trsa.org), based in Alexandria, VA, represents the nearly $20-billion linen, uniform and facility services industry by advocating for fair federal and state regulatory and legislative policy and promoting the economic and environmental benefits of reusable textiles. Employing more than 120,000 people at over 1,500 facilities in North America, our industry supplies, launders and maintains linens, uniforms, towels, mats and other products. Most Canadians and Americans benefit at least once per week from the hygiene and safety of products provided to the industry’s customers. TRSA verifies and quantifies our industry’s commitment to sustainability and cleanliness through our Clean Green and Hygienically Clean certification programs. TRSA increases the industry’s productivity, sustainability, safety and professionalism through education, research, benchmarking and information-sharing.

ABOUT ECOTEX

Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service (www.SmarterLinenSolutions.com) is a major regional provider of healthcare laundry and linen services to hospitals, sub-acute and medical facilities across Canada and the western United States.  A private, family owned and operated company, Ecotex is focused on the delivery of Smarter Linen Solutions to its many customers. Committed to service excellence, Ecotex has invested in technology, equipment as well as practices and processes to improve clinical outcomes for our customers. Using the industries best management practices Ecotex helps to create a safe, comfortable environment for patient care.  As a Clean Green^® certified laundry operator Ecotex demonstrates the use of best practices for reusing, reclaiming and recycling resources.