Family-owned textile finisher H&C Whitehead Ltd. was founded in 1925 by Harold and Carl Whitehead. The company is a recognized world-class textile finisher with more than ninety years of experience in coating and finishing an extensive and varied range of textiles. Within recent months they have successfully commissioned several BRÜCKNER machines.
As part of an ongoing capital upgrade strategy, a new state of the art BRÜCKNER finishing stenter with an ECO-HEAT air/air heat recovery unit has recently been installed in their factory in Brighouse, UK. This complements two other Bruckner stenter lines, both of which have heat recovery systems installed. Essential requirements were the highest performance heat setting consistency across and throughout the oven for delicate woven fabrics and minimal energy consumption in support of Whitehead’s sustainability initiatives. The stenter frame is mainly designed to process fabrics for the apparel industry with anti-pilling, stain resistant or anti-microbial finishes, but also flame-retardant chemistry is applied onto upholstery fabrics to meet fire safety regulations.
The BRÜCKNER ECO-HEAT backpack heat-recovery unit is integrated into the stenter structure, which does not require a separate support structure, but provides for safe access to the unit. It significantly reduces the stenter heating energy requirement up to 20 %. The unit is equipped with several cassette type heat exchangers, which can be removed easily for cleaning or maintenance purposes.
One of the other existing BRÜCKNER lines has been retrofitted with a BRÜCKNER ECO-HEAT air/water heat recovery plant on the exhaust system. It is used to heat up process water for their new open width washing range and can, depending on the heat requirement of the process, regain up to 85 % of the stenter exhaust air heat.
Mr. David Whitehead, Owner and CEO, has successfully led the company for many years and has invested a great deal of effort in preparing the company for the future. Next to the investment into the new BRÜCKNER machines and the new washing range he has had a new production building built to house these new lines.
Mr. Whitehead states: “BRÜCKNER have been instrumental in the transformation in the quality of our end product over the last ten years. The reliability of their machinery has also proven essential to the “just in time” nature of our business. I cannot fault the company and their flexibility in finding solutions to our specific requirements, especially floor space limitations. I hope that BRÜCKNER continue to go from strength to strength and that the textile industry will continue to benefit from their programme of research and development and continual improvement into energy reduction systems and many other areas that will help the environment and improve the quality and consistency of the finished fabric.”
